So I finally gave in and updated my blog engine. It was (almost) a seamless experience.
Like a gazillion other bloggers out there, I use WordPress to create this blog.
“Why” one may ask, “would a website developer use a canned blog engine instead of rolling off a custom blog engine?”
A fair question. I suppose that I should be happy that I am successful enough in my day-job that I don’t really have the time to create the “next generation blog engine.” Not that I wouldn’t mind doing so, but to be honest, I don’t even know what features the “next generation blog engine” should provide.
I barely know the the features available in the current version of WordPress, let alone the features that should be n WordPress, but aren’t. So I will leave that up to some other dedicated soul.
But, back to my update.
The first step, as always, is to back up what you have. I tried doing that, but when I started a database backup on my GoDaddy hosted domain, the process hung (hanged?). This started last night (Saturday), by the way. By Sunday noon, the back up process still displayed GoDaddy’s “spinner” icon so I called tech support.
After a few minutes on hold listening to some “interesting” hold music, I was informed that there was indeed a problem with MySQL backups and that the wonderful folks at GoDaddy were “working on a fix.”
I’m a developer, so I know what that means: they have no idea what the problem is. When you know the problem and are working on a solution, you are “implementing an update.” “Working on a fix” means you’re not really sure what’s wrong yet. It could take a few minutes or a few hours (or in extreme cases, a few days!!). But once you know the problem and the solution, you “implement the update” or “implement the solution.”
Anyway, Sunday evening, I checked my database backup files and I see that my databases had been successfully backed up. So I went into the WordPress admin page and clicked the “update” link. Less than a minute later, I was (am) on the latest version of Worpress. Even better, the site looks and acts that same (the last time I attempted a WordPress update, all my pages broke and I had to re-customize a TON of stuff; hence my reluctance to install the latest update).
So, if you see something that does not look “right,” it probably is not. Just shoot me an email and let me know something’s off. I’ll work on a fix for it.