Upgrades never go well

When I tried to upgrade AdWatcher a few months ago, I ended up with a copy I couldn’t log in to, couldn’t roll back, and couldn’t start a fresh install on since the old database wouldn’t match the new version.

Tonight I tried to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.2 before I work on a couple new plugins. That went equally bad. I followed the “five step” upgrade plan and ended up with posts and comments but not much else — all pages vanished resulting in 404 errors, and plugins that create their own pages stopped working as well. At least this time around, all I needed was to restore the database backup automatically made a few hours ago, and roll back the code to the last revision on the Subversion repository. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Posted on August 3, 2007 in Programming

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  • http://www.clevertools.com Jason

    Very nice. I used to never make DB backup or code backup before I upgraded, but have hence learned my lesson. I tried upgrading my support helpdesk software and man did things go bad. I developed software that now makes routine backups just in case I need to restore to a point. This is one reason, why as a developer, I prefer SaaS over downloadable and user installed software. When the software is a service, you have much better control over upgrades and a better control of the environment. I’m tossing the idea of making a downloadable and user installed version of Clever Tools, and if I do, I think I would charge more for it since it will cause much more support issues.

    On the Adwatcher note, how is your new system coming along, if at all?