Recent versions of WordPress feature an Automatic Upgrade. You can launch the automatic upgrade by clicking the link in the new version banner (if it's there) or by going to the Tools -> Upgrade menu. After that it should be straightforward.
Automatic Upgrades do fail sometimes, though, so remember to backup your database first, and deactivate your plugins before starting the upgrade.
Note that your files all need to be owned by the user under which your Apache server executes, or you will receive a dialog box asking for "connection information," and you will find that no matter what you enter, it won't work.
If the automatic upgrade doesn't work for you, don't panic, just try a manual upgrade.
For these instructions, it is assumed that your blog's URL is http://example.com/wordpress/. Note that during the upgrade process access to your blog may not work for your visitors.
A Warning before you start
If you run into problems Upgrading WordPress with the three Steps described here, you need to revert to your old version first before using the more detailed upgrade instructions (ie. restore the backup made in step 0). Even though you might not run into any errors with this process right away, you might run into problems later down the line. Then it may not be possible to revert far enough back to fix the problem without losing any recent changes.
So If you use Plugins and Themes other than the ones that come with the default WordPress installation, it is advisable to start over with the more detailed upgrade instructions.
Step 0: Before You Get Started
Just in case something goes wrong, make sure you have a backup. WordPress Backups is a comprehensive guide.
Make sure the database user name registered to WordPress has permission to create, modify, and delete database tables. If you installed WordPress in the standard way, and nothing has changed since then, you are fine.
Deactivate your plugins. A plugin might not be compatible with the new version, so it's nice to check for new versions of them and deactivate any that may cause problems. You can reactivate plugins one-by-one after the upgrade. This is particularly important when upgrading to WordPress 2.7!
Step 1: Replace WordPress files
Get the latest WordPress. Either download and extract it to your computer or download it directly to the server.
As a reminder, to extract a tar.gz to a folder use this command, replacing (folder name) with the name of your folder: tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz -C ./(folder name)
Delete your old wp-includes and wp-admin directories.
Copy the new WordPress files to your server, overwriting old files in the root, except perhaps the wp-content folder (see "NOTE" below). You may use FTP or shell commands to do so. Note that this means *all* the files, including all the files in the root directory as well. If you use the default or classic theme and have customized it, then you can skip that theme.
NOTE The wp-content folder requires special handling, as do the plugins and themes folders. You should copy over the contents of these folders, not the entire folder. In some cases, copying the entire folder may overwrite all your customizations and added content.
Also take care to preserve the content of the wp-config.php file in the root directory. This file contains current settings for your existing installation, e.g. database sign-in information. Occasionally new versions of WordPress add statements to this file. (E.g. in version 2.5 the SECRET_KEY variable was added, see Extended upgrade instructions). Compare your existing file with the new installation file which is named wp-config-sample.php. Either transfer your settings to the sample-file and rename it to wp-config.php or copy the new statements from the sample file into your current file.
Step 2: Upgrade your installation
Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin. You may be asked to login again. If a database upgrade is necessary at this point, WordPress will detect it and give you a link to a URL like http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Follow that link and follow the instructions. This will update your database to be compatible with the latest code. If you fail to do this step, your blog might look funny.
Step 3: Do something nice for yourself
If you have caching enabled, your changes will appear to users more immediately if you clear the cache at this point (and if you don't, you may get confused when you see the old version number in page footers when you check to see if the upgrade worked).
Consider rewarding yourself with a blog post about the upgrade, reading that book or article you've been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and let the world pass you by.
Troubleshooting
If anything has gone wrong the first thing to do is go through all the steps in our extended upgrade instructions. That page also has information about some of the most common problems we see.
This guide will provide you with advise and instructions on how to install Java for the Linux computer for Linux RPM package. In order to install the Linux RPM (self-extracting) file, please follow the instructions as provided below:
- Please type following command at the terminal:
su
- Now please enter the root password.
- You can change to the directory in which you want to install and for that please type following:
cd
- If you would like to install the software in the /usr/java/ directory, then please type:
cd /usr/java
- If you would like to change the permission of the file you downloaded to be executable, then please type following command:
chmod a+x jre-6u-linux-i586-rpm.bin
- you can commence thethe installation process by typing following:
./jre-6u-linux-i586-rpm.bin
This command will displas the binary license agreement. After reading the agreement, please. press the spacebar to display the next page. At the end, please enter yes to proceed with the installation.
Please note that the installation file creates jre-6u-linux-i586.rpm file in the current directory.
- In order to install the package, please run the RPM command at the terminal to install the packages and for that please type:
rpm -iv jre-6u-linux-i586.rpm
- Now Java is installed in jre1.6.0_ sub-directory under the current directory which is /usr/java/jre1.6.0_.
- If you want to verify that the jre1.6.0_ sub-directory is listed under the current directory, then please type:
ls
The installation is now complete. If you followed all the instructions as provided in this tutorial guide the Linux RPM is successfully installed on the Linux computer.
PPF5 is the last PPF to the public beta therefore declaring the final release If you have the iPC OSx86 Public Beta, then just patch with all the PPFs until PPF5 and you will have the final release. And don’t apply any PPFs once you have the final ISO, those PPFs are for the iPC OSx86 Public Beta ISO. The new file will be let loose on the internet as ”iPC OSx86 10.5.6 Universal FINAL” at midnight, marking the 25th anniversary of the humble Mac. The iPC Info page “iPC OSx86 Universal 10.5.6″ has been updated to match the PPF5 information.
Thanks for those who stayed for the wild ride, and keep watching for the LiveDVD release soon (as soon as I get bugs fixed)!
A new version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard—labeled 10A335—has hit developers. Apple hasn't mentioned any new features or bug fixes, however. The Server version—which was released alongside—does come with an easier to use version of Podcast Producer, new spam mail filters in Mail Server, and other niceties.
KDE 4.3 has officially been released. Code named Caizen, this release builds up on the previous release of KDE (4.2) bringing with it new innovations mainly on the desktop, applications and development platform.
Watch the following video to learn more about the fabulous new features in KDE 4.3.
Put in a nutshell, the prominent new features are as follows :
Plasma has a new theme called Air.
Now you can have different set of widgets in each workspace.
Introduced new widgets which connect to many prominent online web services such as Flickr, blogging platforms and social networks (Twitter ...).
Widgets can now live on the taskbar and many other places other than the desktop.
Instant file and folder preview feature introduced in Dolphin file manager.
A more helpful KRunner - The ubiquitous run dialog in KDE 4.
OpenSSH and Putty are free SSH clients to connect to a unix or linux server from a computer running windows operating system. Though Microsoft Windows has a built-in client to FTP and Telnet remote systems, it does not have a SSH client to connect to a remote server. OpenSSH and Putty are useful client if you need to SSH and Telnet to a remote computer.
OpenSSH for Windows:
OpenSSH for Windows is a free package that installs a minimal OpenSSH server and client utilities in the Cygwin package without needing the full Cygwin installation.The OpenSSH for Windows package provides full SSH/SCP/SFTP support. SSH terminal support provides a familiar Windows Command prompt, while retaining Unix/Cygwin-style paths for SCP and SFTP. the following are the general features of OpenSSH:
Windows NT Service Support
Windows Command Prompt support for SSH Terminal
SCP/SFTP server support
Includes Command-line clients
Free download OpenSSH installer from here. The full install of OpenSSH is about 5mb, while installer is under 3mb.
Putty Client:
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. Free download Putty from here.
We will see how to use OpenSSH and Putty in our future articles.
There is no doubt about it that SSH is a handy administration and remote access tool. Have you ever wanted to add port forwarding or cancel port forwarding from within an active SSH connection? Well, a feature that many do not know about is the ssh escape feature. With this pseudo terminal you can do some nifty things, such as forward ports over an active SSH connection.
To do this, follow these instructions:
Open up the ssh pseudo terminal control with the ssh escape function and open up a command line as follows:
[user@linuxblog.ro ~]$ ~C
ssh> help
Commands:
-L[bind_address:]port:host:hostport Request local forward
-R[bind_address:]port:host:hostport Request remote forward
-KR[bind_address:]port Cancel remote forward
As you can see from the ssh command line that the syntax is very similar to if you were forwarding a port before making the ssh connection. I normally do a local forward so I most often use the -L <port>:<host><host port> syntax. You will need to issue the ~C again to get back into ssh command mode once you’ve viewed the help to actually issue your forwarded port.
So an actual local port forward over an active SSH connection would look like this:
Some times its nice to tunnel through SSH. Perhaps you have SSH running but the firewall does not allow anything but SSH in. You can tunnel VNC (or any other service) through SSH by doing the following:
On the machine local to you establish an SSH connection to the remote machine with “Local (-L)” port forwarding. This may seem confusing and often confuses me, where <-p PORT> is optional
The economic situation is eating into your profits, and the Microsoft Office licenses look more expensive than before. Or maybe you are familiar with the way Microsoft Office has looked for over a decade: it had a file menu, edit menu, and format menu, and you balk at the thought of retraining your staff for Microsoft Office 2007’s bizarre ribbon. In either case, you don’t have to buy Microsoft Office thanks to OpenOffice.org: the best kept secret in office suites.
OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation application, drawing program, and database. It’s compatible with practically all operating systems and runs well on old and new computers alike. Don’t worry about exchanging documents with Microsoft Office users because OpenOffice.org is compatible with many file formats including the new Microsoft Office 2007 formats.
Not too good to be true
Don’t let the light-weight price tag fool you to comparing OpenOffice.org with the light-weight Microsoft Works office suite. (Isn’t it a little strange that Microsoft’s Works and Office compete with each other?) OpenOffice.org has sophisticated features making it useful for personal and businesses use.
It’s good to be skeptical about free offers, but OpenOffice.org is the real thing. Its origins reach back over twenty years to StarWriter and StarOffice. Technology giant Sun Microsystems purchased StarOffice and in 2000 released most of StarOffice as the open source project called OpenOffice.org. Open source means the source code (or programming blueprints) are available to anyone who wants to learn or improve it. Open source fosters a rapid, cost-effective, community-lead approach to software development.
Often businesses need paid support and consulting, which are available for OpenOffice.org and its cousin StarOffice from Sun Microsystems and consultants worldwide. If you prefer internal support, you pocket the savings. Either way, enjoy the commoditization of the office suite and making the best choice for your own business.
Easier than you think
Having switched the office I worked at, I know first hand that regular people quickly learn OpenOffice.org. Originally chosen for its price, it was the standard office suite on all computers. Looking back, it would have been ideal to provide training, but the staff, clients, and newcomers learned it with fewer questions than I expected. Many people didn’t seem to notice it was not the Microsoft Office they used before.
Switching
The general process to switch is:
Evaluate the product. If you have few documents with macros and few third-party integrations with third-party applications, OpenOffice.org is an easy win.
Make the pitch. Getting support from management is essential.
Roll it out to a select group of people.
Highlight the positives: a familiar interface (certainly more familiar than Office 2007), unique features such as PDF export, and money diverted to higher priorities—raises for all (maybe not).
Roll it out to everyone.
Provide a variety of training and resources because each person learns differently. Some people prefer class room training, some books, etc. In each work area, appoint a leader to field basic questions to provide quick help and reduce overwhelming your mainline support on the day of the roll out.
Next I’ll cover some important areas to get you started in your evaluation.
Download and install
Different names
OpenOffice.org consists of multiple components like Microsoft Office.
There’s a variety of ways to start OpenOffice.org. On Microsoft Windows, OpenOffice.org puts a shortcut on the desktop. Just double click it.
On Windows, you can start OpenOffice.org from its quickstarter next to the system clock. Right click on the quickstarter, and then left click on the component.
Like any Windows application, it can be started by clicking on the Start Menu, then clicking Programs, then clicking OpenOffice.org, and then clicking on the component.
Of course, you can start OpenOffice.org by opening any of the documents associated with it on your computer, in your email, or online.
First look inside
At a first glance, OpenOffice.org Writer version 3.1 looks more like Microsoft Word 2003 than Word 2007 looks like Word 2003. OpenOffice.org has the familiar menu bar and toolbars, and many commands are found in the same place as in Microsoft Office.
MS Office Word 2003
OpenOffice Writer 2003
Word 2007
Customizing OpenOffice.org
Make OpenOffice.org feel like home by customizing it. Here are a few suggestions.
Better safe than sorry: to enable document backups, click Tools – Options. Click Load/Save and then General. Check the box labeled Always create backup copy.
The word completion feature saves time by finishing long words. If you see OpenOffice.org has correctly guessed the word you are currently typing, press the Enter key to accept the word. If you prefer to disable this feature, click Tools – AutoCorrect. Click the last tab Word Completion. Then uncheck the box Enable Word Completion.
By default OpenOffice.org only prints the selected worksheet instead of the whole workbook. If you prefer the Excel default, do this: open Calc. Click Tools – Options. Then click OpenOffice.org Calc and Print. Finally uncheck the box Print only selected sheets.
Sharing documents
While OpenOffice.org does fairly well saving in Microsoft Office formats, it’s best to retain the default setting to save documents in OpenDocument formats.
If you need to retain a few machines on Microsoft Office, either make OpenOffice.org the primary office suite or install the OpenXML / ODF Translator, Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Office 2007 SP2. Any of these will allow Microsoft Office to share ODF files with OpenOffice.org users.
Chances are those with which you do business outside your organization use Microsoft Office. When sending documents externally, train your staff to click File – Send – Email as PDF or Email as Microsoft Word. In the future ODF may be the ideal exchange medium, but today PDF and Microsoft Office formats are the de facto standards. (Freedom purists should remember the specifications of the binary Microsoft Office file formats are covered by the Microsoft Open Specification Promise).
To underline potentially incorrect grammar with a blue squiggly line, install the popular LanguageTool extension. It does well at catching double words, homophones, and other common mistakes.
Presentations can easily balloon to sizes larger than necessary. For example, you may insert a 3 megapixel image from a digital camera, but over two megapixels are wasted as a typical presentation display is only 0.8 megapixels. The extra size wastes disk space, clogs up email boxes, and takes extra time to download. Simply install Sun Presentation Minimizer to tame the size of these bloated files.
Import PDFs
Not only does OpenOffice.org out of the box export PDFs with advanced options, OpenOffice.org imports PDFs in an editable format with remarkable results. PDFs aren’t designed for editing, so don’t expect too much, but OpenOffice.org will save some people the cost of buying Adobe Acrobat.
Templates
Microsoft Office ships with many templates, and OpenOffice.org doesn’t. Don’t worry because installing templates is easy, and there are many nice templates available for free. Start with these: Sun Template Pack I, Sun Template Pack II, and Label Templates. Remember OpenOffice.org reads all Microsoft templates! Check back later on this web site for a more thorough guide to OpenOffice.org resources.
Fonts
The best fonts are those that everyone has to ensure the document looks the same on all machines. De facto standards are Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New, and OpenOffice.org automatically substitutes these fonts if not available (for example, on Linux). OpenOffice.org comes with the DejaVu and Liberation families; the latter is very similar to Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New.
For branding purposes, you may want to deploy a common font within your company. A personal favorite is Gentium Basic, and OpenOffice.org supports any TrueType font installed on your operating system. When exporting PDFs, OpenOffice.org automatically includes a subset of the font, so the document looks exactly the same on all machines.
Getting help
As you build expertise within your company to support routine issues or need assistance with one-time situations like initial deployment, check OpenOffice.org Support for free and paid resources including service plans, consultants, books, tutorials, and online forums. Check back later on this web site for a more thorough guide to OpenOffice.org resources.
Conclusion
With its mature feature set, strong support system, and economical price tag OpenOffice.org can add solid value to your business. When you are ready to put your cash to better use than paying The Other Guy, start planning your own OpenOffice.org migration.
About the author: Andrew Ziem has worked with OpenOffice.org since 2001 as an author, trainer, tester, and quasi-developer. He blogs about OpenOffice.org at http://www.oooninja.com.
If you have the iPC OSx86 Public Beta, then just patch with all the PPFs until PPF5 and you will have the final release. And don’t apply any PPFs once you have the final ISO, those PPFs are for the iPC OSx86 Public Beta ISO. The new file will be let loose on the internet as ”iPC OSx86 10.5.6 Universal FINAL” at midnight, marking the 25th anniversary of the humble Mac. The iPC Info page “iPC OSx86 Universal 10.5.6″ has been updated to match the PPF5 information.
Reduce the size of presentations 