Quintic
WordPress – Updates

Needed to update the version of WordPress. Well technically I didn’t need to, but thought it best to. There are two routes to updating:

  1. Online using ftp to download the updates
  2. Offline using http GET to download the compressed file to disc and then manually updating at you leisure.

Option 1 seemed good – so gave it a try. Everything started fine, then failed with the message ‘Could not create directory’. Slightly worrying as I thought I had full permissions across the WordPress directory. Also a bit annoying that it didn’t say which directory it could not create. However, as always, DuckDuckGo is your friend. Several web pages on this topic. The one that I found most useful was how-to-solve-wordpress-could-not-create-directory. From the web page about the only issue I could see was that root was the group owner of the directory that owned the WordPress directory. Changed that, retried, and everything went like clockwork. Did have a slight pause for concern when it seemed to be stuck on step six, but it was just a case of waiting and letting it run

Multiple updates later, with the ownership problem solved as above, the whole process is straightforward. It does pause for a while on step 6 ‘Disabling Maintenance mode…’ which is when it is actually doing the installation, but wait just a few minutes, then up comes the shiny new version.

One word of caution. I would recommend updating an off-line (Development) version, before updating any live versions. WordPress is a complex system, and I have noticed that updates can impact how pages/posts are rendered. So, always best to:

  • Update Development site
  • Check all Pages/Posts being rendered correctly
  • Update Live site

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