Up until about half an hour ago I was running WordPress 2.0. *shock* I hear you gasp. Why hadn’t I updated to the newest version of WP? Two simple reasons, really.

1. I wanted to wait until a more stable version of 2.2 was released to safe having to update again a week, month, whatever after release, and;
2. I’ve had bad experience with upgrading various otherCMS in the past, and didn’t fancy either loosing everything or spending ages backing up all my databases

To be honest though, there’s only one reason that I’ve updated tonight. WordPress Automatic Update Plugin. I found it via a quick google search for an other plugin I was looking for and liked the blurb;

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin saves you all the headaches and efforts while upgrading your wordpress installation. Here is what the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade does.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link to run the database upgrade.
8. Re-activates the plugins.
9. Gives you a link to clean up the installation after completion.
10. Shows you the upgrade log.

You can also run the Automatic version which will run all the processes automatically.

This plugin will let you upgrade from any version to the latest version provided by Wordpress. I have tested the plugin with version 1.5+.

Within ten minutes I’d downloaded the plugin, uploaded it, backed up my entire database and upgraded to version 2.2.1. It really was that easy! I’ve not lost a single byte of data, with the only issue being that some of my plugins didn’t re-activate themselves but that wasn’t much of a hassle to do myself.

A brilliant plugin, everybody should install it!