WordPress MU

Hi The last time I tried to upgrade I stuffed it and I had to fall back on the backup.

With 2.6 out I want to try it again but this time I want to play safe.

This is what I have in mind (the terminology might be skewed):

I have my blogs setup as http://blog1.domain.com

I read somewhere where an MU user cloned the site and then did the update on the clone. When that was successful she just took the clone over to the main address. Let me rather use someone else's terminology to explain:

See the original post here:
http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=1614

"My testsite and livesite is hosted at the same
server. I have one folder named "test" and one
folder named "www" - the latter being the
livesite.

"So I had the working RC4 in the test-folder.
Then I simply renamed "test" to "www" and "www"
to "test". I updated the wp-config.php-file in
the new www-folder, copied all themes, plugins
and the blog.dir-folder to the new www-folder".

I would appreciate if you can tell me if I should follow the idea above, and if yes, then please share a little detail on how I should approach it.

If you have other advice for me then please share.

Regards

Johan

Hmm,

Well, this wouldn't work if VHOST=YES. WPMu uses the virtual subdomains so making a test.yourdom.org to update would still update the common core files (a core feature of WPMu) -I'm thinking out loud here, bear with me... So the folders that they are talking about can not be under the influence of the virtualhost stuff -each installation must be isolated from the other and the wp-config points to unique db's. This points a neon-lit sign to a non-shared-host environment to be able to (easily) add test install entries for the test WPMu instance...

Are you on your own box?

Either way, one way to do this (including on a shared host) is to have a spare domain on the same server (unique cPanel account or equivalent) so that you could have the completely isolated WPMu installs...one to test, the other for the live site. After upgrading the test site successfully, you could make a copy of the db dump of the test site, search and replace the test domain name info etc to your live site info and keep this file just in case your tested and proven upgrade process for your live site borks (then you could quickly restore the live db from your prepped db dump file)... Of course, this is a lot of crashing about the tool shed for rank amateurs and I'm sure there are wonderful svn, virtual machine alternatives that real people use...

Don't forget to lock down the test site/blow it away so you don't have duplicate data all across the netdom...

Hi musnake Thanks for taking the time to help me along the way. Reading your suggestion I think I should just follow the upgrade procedure and hope for the best. But seeing that I stuffed it up once.......

As long as you have the db backup you can make it through the dark times while your boss shouts at you over the red phone.

@johanhorak: I took a similar approach to that.

Setup a test.domain.com blog on the main installation.
Copied the existing MU installation into another directory.
Backup up dB's
Set up a Virtual Host in my webserver to point the test subdomain to the new directory (overrides the wildcard sub domain).
Upgraded and sorted any problems on test subdomain.
renamed directories so that test is now live and live is test.
Removed test virtual host
Continued on my merry way.

Hi cafespain thanks for that I will do what you suggest.