How to upgrade WordPress and plugins without FTP
I’ve read so many forum threads on this that I think it’s time to share these very simple instructions. Follow them for your website and you’ll finally have the fully automatic updates working as they should.
Automaitic WordPress and plugin updates
First of all, let’s just make sure we’re talking about the same thing. Since version 2.7, WordPress received one of the most useful features ever: automatic update. What this means is that every time a new version of WordPress is released, you now get a “click here to upgrade” option in your admin dashboard. When you click the link, it should ask for a confirmation and then proceed with automatic downloading and upgrading of your blog. But because of misconfigurations, this feature isn’t always working, and then you end up with a configuration dialog suggesting that you provide FTP credentials for accessing your server.
Possible reasons for automatic WordPress upgrade not working
There’s only a few reasons why WordPress or plugins upgrade feature will not work.
WordPress Admin Bar tricks
If you like the WordPress admin bar introduced recently, you’re going to love the way it can be expanded to do pretty much anything you want.
DigWP.com blog has a great collection of links in a single post with some very good ideas: Admin Bar Tricks.
My personal favorites are: move admin bar to the bottom of screen and disabling admin bar for non-admins.
WordPress 2.8.1 brings stability and security
I really like the way first releases of WordPress 2.8 come out! The most recent update, WordPress 2.8.1 posted a few hours ago, brings some great improvements which make your blogs more stable and much more secure.
Read more
WordPress Logos and Buttons
WordPress
Gone are the days of manually clipping the WordPress logo from the official website! Last week I’ve discovered a wonderful page with all the official WordPress logos and buttons offered in PDF (with vector graphics) and PNG versions of everything.
There’s a set of WordPress wallpapers and a neat table with current colors used by WordPress engine.
Like WordPress? Find out more:
Upgrade to WordPress 2.6.2!
Looks like WordPress 2.6.2 with a few fixes is out, so I’ve just upgraded all my blogs to this new milestone.
For all the details, read the official WordPress 2.6.2 announcement or glance through the list of bugs fixed in 2.6.2 release.
See also:
WordPress 2.5 Release
The wait is over, and WordPress 2.5 is finally released! Compared to the previous 2.3 branch, this new release brings an amazing pack of improvements and additions, and it looks like 2.5 is going to be one of the most interesting WordPress releases of the past years.
There is an excellent highlight of all the main features on the WordPress blog: WordPress 2.5 Brecker.
New WordPress 2.5 features
The things I’m really looking forward to try are the following:
- new dashboard – apart from cleaner look and improved usability, it also supports widgets for expanded functionality
- multi-file upload – apparently with a progress bar!
- fully integrated tag management – adding/renaming/removing any tags is a native functionality with this release, so no additional plugins are needed
- using newer version of TinyMCE (that’s the fancy editor with plenty of useful toolbars you see when creating a page or a post) promises fixes to many complex HTML issues (working with lists and paragraphs has traditionally been painful for me), and there’s a no-distractions mode I really look forward to – minimum of interface controls so that you can fully concentrate on the content
There are many more improvements like automatic plugin upgrades and built-in image gallery functionality, which many of you will find useful as well, but I’ve yet to look into them.
All in all, I think it’s the most exciting upgrade, WordPress team once again did a great job.
Wait no longer: download WordPress 2.5 and get busy with your upgrades!
More links on WordPress 2.5
- Official announcement post for WP 2.5
- Getting ready for WordPress 2.5
- New interface in WordPress 2.5: a screencast
- WordPress Upgrading Guide
WordPress 2.3 is released!
Finally, the new release of WordPress is here. WordPress 2.3, codenamed “Dexter”, brings many long-awaited features and fixes 350+ issues found in previous versions.
Most interesting features in WordPress 2.3
- Tags - now with native support. Strangely enough, you’ll need to download separate plugins to manage the tags.
- Canonical URLs – will allow you to change slugs of any post and have WordPress automatically redirect old slug URL to the new URL of your post. Brilliant idea, great for SEO! Mark Jaquith has a great post explaining how it all works: Canonical URLs in WordPress 2.3
- Advanced editing options in WYSIWYG editor for posts and pages are finally accessible via a special button. The trusty Shift+Alt+V combination for doing the same still works, of course.
- Update notification functionality will let you know when there’s a new version of the WordPress engine or any of the plugins you use. Must save us all tons of time we usually spend tracking the updates, downloading new versions and troubleshooting the upgrades of all the plugins.
If you want to learn more, there’s a traditional 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.3 review posted at Technosailor. As always, a highly recommended post!
Before you rush it to download the latest WordPress and get your upgrade started, please be sure to verify all your plugins are up to date and will be supported in the 2.3 release. I’ve done this for all the plugins on Perfect Blogger, and so my upgrade happened in a matter of seconds and without a single problem.
If you think you need help upgrading your WordPress – feel free to contact me and we’ll see what can be done.
Make Akismet Automatically Discard Old Spam
I love the Akismet spam blocking plugin functionality. It makes my life so much easier! However, not many people remember that it has a very useful feature on top of its basic setup: an option to make Akismet automatically discard all the spam older than 2 weeks.
Now, instead of carefully clicking through the list of spam, I simply glance through it to mark the non-spam messages off, and then forget about the rest. Akismet takes care of it and makes sure that my spam comments page is never too crowded.
To activate this option, first go to the Plugins section of your WordPress admin panel…
… and then click Akismet Configuration:
After ticking the option on and clicking the button, you’ll have this great feature enabled and your future peace of mind guaranteed. Enjoy!
New WordPress Blog Install Checklist
I’ve recently started new blog, and thought it would be useful for you to know my checklist for making sure the website is build with SEO basics in mind, ready to attract traffic and has its feed delegated to FeedBurner service for easier management.
Upgrade to WordPress 2.2.1
Although I myself have upgraded all my blogs to WordPress 2.2.1 almost a week ago, I still can see it’s never too late to remind everyone to do the same.
As you probably now, WordPress 2.2.1 incorporating multiple security fixes and is therefore highly recommended.
You can download the full installation of WordPress from official website or, if you’re upgrading from WordPress 2.2, go ahead and use WordPress 2.2.1 instructions and archives by Mark Aquith.
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