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WordPress 2.5.1 was just released on April 28, 2008. The importance of upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1 is that it fixed a number of bugs, provided performance enhancements, and included a very important security fix. It is highly recommended to do so especially your WordPress blog/website provides open registration because it could bring vulnerability to your blog/website. I normally waited a week or two to see what problem(s) will emerge. I found out that a lot of people had have images uploading error after they upgraded to WordPress 2.5/WordPress 2.5.1. However this is just a minor issue and I already found a fix to it. Read Solution For WordPress Uploading Image Problem to find out how to solve that problem.

I just upgraded WordPress 2.5 to WordPress 2.5.1 recently. So far everything is fine. If you are interested in upgrade to it, then you may read on. The first thing is to find out you meet the minimum requirement. Below is the code that you can use to check your minimum requirement; but first save it as checkphpNmysql.php or any name you want:

<?phpinfo();?>

Then upload that file to your public_html directory, and run it as http://www.yoursitename.com/checkphpNmysql.php in your browser to find out your PHP version and MySQL version right away. Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name. If you fulfill the minimum requirement, then you have two choices: (1) You can get WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin to do the job for you in about two minutes. I’ve never tried it before so you are taking that choice on your own risk. (2) Alternatively you may follow the instrcctions below to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1:

• Back up your database. The instructions here show you how to do that.

• Use FTP to back up ALL of your files in your WordPress directory to your PC (personal computer).

• Make sure your backups are usable.

• Make sure you deactivate All your plugins.

• Download and unzip WordPress 2.5.1 here to your PC.

• Delete the old WordPress files except the following files:
  • wp-config.php file
  • wp-content folder
  • wp-images folder (only older installations from 1.5.x days will have this folder)
  • wp-includes/languages/folder; if you are using a language file, and it is here rather than in wp-content/languages/, do not delete this folder (you might want to move your language files to wp-content/languages/ for easier upgrading in the future)
  • .htaccess file (if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it)
  • Custom Content and/or Plugins (if you have any images or other custom content or Plugins inside the wp-content folder, do not delete them).

• Upload your unzipped wordpress-2.5.1 files to your WordPress directory.

• Run http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php in your browser. Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.

• If your WordPress is resided in a subdirectory called blog, then you need to run it as http://www.yoursitename.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php.

• Make sure you reactivate those plugins that you deactivated earlier

Now go to explore your new WordPress 2.5.1 interface. Find out what are new there. Do you like this article? Don’t forget to subscribe! Your comments are welcome.

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