This video and article explains how to easily manually upgrade wordpress.
- Download the new wordpress
- Go to WordPress.org and download the new wordpress. As of writing this article the current version is 3.1.2.
- Upload the wordpress zip file to your server
- Get a ftp client (I recommend FileZilla for all operating systems)
- Login to your ftp account and find the wordpress root directory of your website. You’ll know its the root directory if you see a lot of wp-this and wp-that files.
- Upload the wordpress zip file.
- Unzip and install the new wordpress
- Get an ssh client. For Linux and Mac I recommend just using the “ssh” command line just like in the video. For windows I recommend either installing Cygwin and using the ssh command in it or there is the SSH Secure Shell.
- Login to the ssh client.
- Run the following code putting the paths that are correct for your server.
#Change directory to the wordpress root directory.
cd /path/to/root/
#Unzip the wordpress file this will unzip the components in a
#new folder titled wordpress
unzip wordpress.Version.zip
#Go into the new wordpress folder
cd wordpress
#Copy all of the new wordpress files into the parent directory
#make sure you are in the correct directory
#/path/to/root/wordpress/ You can type in "pwd" to know what
#directory you are in
cp -Rf * ../
#wordpress software is now updated, now just to clean up the
#extra files. Go to the parent directort
cd ../
#remove the wordpress zip file and the extra directory make
#sure you are in the /path/to/root/ directory
rm -R wordpress
rm wordpress.Version.zip