To Be Calimquim

After not doing any WordPress updates for more than five years, I’ve now updated my WordPress site to use Version 4.7.3. Furthermore, I updated my WordPress database from MySQL4 to MySQL5. You can read more details of this update in the blog post that follows.

The basic steps were as follows:

1. Backup all WordPress files using FileZilla FTP to my PC.
2. Backup (export) MySQL database using hosting cPanel to my PC.
3. Deactivate all WordPress plugins.
4. Update WordPress to 4.7.3 using the admin panel within WordPress.
5. Update all plugins and then activate them.

Here are some finer points of the five steps above.

1. When backing up WordPress file, make sure that hidden files are viewable in the FileZilla FTP software.  There is an important .htpaccess file that you need copy too.
2. I used phpMyAdmin to work with my database.  When I exported the database, it was MySQL4.  In order to update my database, I had to create a new one as MySQL5.  Then I used import database function to import my data from my backed up database file into the new one I created.
3. In the WordPress admin panel, just go to the plugins page and deactivate all of them.  You don’t want any issues during the WordPress update.  By deactivating all the plugins, there will less risk that something will go wrong.
4. Since my WordPress site was a simple one, I took the chance to update from 3.3.1 straight to 4.7.3.  If I had a more complicated site, I would have done the incremental upgrade, which you can read about here.
5. Once the WordPress update completes, then you should be able to re-activate all your plugins.  There may be a chance that some plugins won’t work with the latest WordPress release.  For my case, if the plugin wasn’t that important, I just deleted it from my admin page.