Finally updated WordPress to 2.3.2

I decided to update my WordPress from 2.2.3 to 2.3.2, because some plugins wouldn’t run. But I immediately started suspecting that this updating business would be a pain… And, as always, I forgot the saying: “Morning is wiser than evening.”.. You shouldn’t reinstall anything major late in the evening!

Of course, I can’t reinstall things like everyone else; I have to do it the most convoluted way possible… Though maybe this is the only way—I didn’t check. Anyway, I decided to reinstall everything by hand. Luckily, experience has really drilled one habit into me: always back everything up! :)

Made a backup—a start! Nuked the old WordPress to f*cking hell, but kept the database! Started loading it up; it complained a little, but found the data. The theme reverted to the default, of course, but then the trouble started with the wp_options table. I fiddled with it and realized this wasn’t going anywhere good :)) The “categories” were acting up too. As it turned out later, the structure of the database itself had changed, including the relationships..

Dropped the database to save myself the hassle! This is where that database backup saved me.

Had a look at the new WordPress database structure and used Total Commander (the “Compare by Content” utility) to compare the structure of the current tables—wp_terms, wp_term_relationships, wp_term_taxonomy, wp_postmeta, wp_posts, wp_comments—with the backed-up version of the old WordPress database.

Then I pulled the INSERTs out of the backup, put together a regex in Notepad++ to replace the lines, and reworked the whole lot. Set up the relationships between wp_terms and wp_term_taxonomy by trial and error.

Loaded all the posts and comments. Nothing had changed here compared with the old WordPress!

Done! Started installing the plugins I hadn’t been able to install… Though I had to look at their names to remember why I’d wanted them in the first place :))) Started googling the names, came across a couple of sites, liked the blog design of one of the commenters, grabbed his theme for myself, and voilà—a redesign too :))) And now, my dear reader, check out the redesign ;)

The actual table names have been changed; any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental ;)

UPD: This is a restored post, so I’ve put up a screenshot instead of the design itself.