Arrrrgh! My Blog is Broken! Anatomy of a Worpdress Upgrade Crash

Firas is a staff writer on Mike’s Life, and you can find out more about him here.

When Wordpress 2.9.1 was released last week, I had to upgrade it on various blogs that I own or manage and one of them was my wife's fresh blog; AyoSays (http://www.ayosays.com). I always choose to go with automatic upgrade since its faster, much easier and safer! But unfortunately, in my case it wasn't fast or easy or safe, at all! A very disappointing thing happened after I was shown a message on my admin panel that the upgrade had failed. The front-end had crashed but thank God my admin panel was working and I could export the articles, comments and pages.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What happened exactly?

I really hate those weird crashes when they happen; there is no logical explanation for them happening, at least to me! I, of course, tried to Google my problem hoping that I could find a fix or a solution but with no luck! The crash which happened caused the following:

1- Front end turned into a white blank page with no code or anything!

2- Back end, or Wordpress admin panel, working just fine!

3- All plugins were disabled and stopped from showing under the plugins section, although I could locate all the plugins and their source files on my server. It seemed that the crash caused Wordpress not to read the plugins properly.

4- Thesis theme and the Default 2 themes which come with the installation had disappeared as well, although I could alos find them on my server with all of their files.

What did I do?

1- I immediately exported all the content added to the blog from Tools ? Export.

2- Took a copy of all needed files from my server through FTP: Themes, uploads and plugins.

3- Tried to install WP-DB plugin and take a backup from the DB, but it didn't work.

4- Tried to fix the error by replacing the core files of Wordpress but with no luck, nothing changed.

Things I wish I could do!

1- Export ALL Thesis settings using Thesis Settings Export Plugin (http://www.3dogmedia.com/thesis-settings-export-plugin/).

2- Back up the blog's Database using WP-DB.

3- Upgrade wordpress successfully in the first place!

How did I fix the problem?

Actually I don't know if I can consider what I have done a fix, but I did solve the problem and the blog is working properly again. What I did after hours of trying to fix the problem, is I removed the whole current installation folder through my cPanel and re-installed Wordpress all over again. Then I uploaded the files I copied to my local machine and imported the content. I also did some Thesis tweaks since I didn't export its settings.

I am sure that this is not the ideal solution, but I couldn't find any other or faster way to deal with it! Having a blog go down is really bad and FEEELS even worse when its your wife's!

Did anyone else have any issues with this upgrade? Or was it just me?

As well as being a staff writer on Mike’s Life, you find Firas at his own blog Steitblog and on Twitter @steityeh