It has been more than a week since the release of WordPress 2.5 and I have only just begun testing it.

Apart from this blog – which is generously hosted by a friend – I have 4 other WordPress sites that I (might) upgrade to this new version. 1 of the 4 sites is still under construction so it has become part of my test plan. All 4 sites are hosted by Bluehost, which I consider an excellent webhost. Another post on that topic perhaps before I digress.

Bluehost includes Fantastico and has (also) recently included a new automated script installer called SimpleScripts. For some reason, the new WordPress 2.5 was not available on Fantastico as a simple upgrade as it has been for other version releases BUT it is ready for installation on SimpleScripts.

As this seems to be the easier option for me to upgrade all my sites to 2.5, I decided to give it a go. Before your proceed, however, I strongly advice that you create an XML export of your posts! In my case, I tried it on my site-under-construction, which still had no posts in it. But I would definitely create an export for the other 3.

1. Go to SimpleScripts on your Bluehost cPanel.

2. As you click on WordPress on SimpleScripts, you are presented with these options:

3. The only option (it seems) is to install on an existing server. So, I click on “Install Now >” which will then present with this:

4. I choose the site where I would like to install 2.5, give the site a “new” name and enter a tagline — which turns out to be the blog description later on. Then in the Advanced Configuration, both the Generate me an Administrator login and Automatically create a new database are ticked.

5. Pausing for a long while to think about these 2 options, I decided NO to both. This means I have to enter the extra fields needed for the installation to continue. The Administrator login was easy as I remember those but I struggled with the database part. As I am not an extreme techie, I only know the MySQL database name and user. I did not know what the hostname, password and table prefix are for the site I was upgrading. So, I decided to leave these fields as they are. When I finally completed the installation, SimpleScripts informed me that WordPress 2.5 has been successfully installed and the admin login details have been emailed to my registered address.

Good, I thought. That was easy. But to my disappointment, the installation went wrong. It was now saying that there is an error connecting to the database. I did not panic much as this was still a site-under-construction so I really had nothing to lose. Except for my time, of course. Anyway, I checked back on the SimpleScripts panel and it said that I had installed WP 2.5 but Fantastico has no register of this installation. It was still displaying the site as the previous version, 2.3.3.

So, I decided to delete 2.5. During the uninstall, I got a message saying that it has already been deleted! Strange. I then went to Fantastico and deleted 2.3.3 and that finished successfully.

I believe that it was those database details that made the installation of 2.5 go wrong. I re-installed 2.3.3 again (using Fantastico) so I could try it one more time. I followed everything from the beginning (steps 1-5) EXCEPT this time, I kept the option of creating a new database ticked (step 5). That seemed to do the trick, however, I am not quite sure if the SimpleScript installation did create a new database. Silly me, I did not take note of the databases before and after. What I did notice though is that the WordPress database created by Fantastico was still there. As to whether it is the same database that is being utilised by 2.5, I am not quite sure. If anyone has an idea out there, please feel free to enlighten us.

This is the reason why I highly suggest that you export your posts first before proceeding to do the steps I mentioned above. Please also note that step 1-5 is applicable only to Bluehost hosted WordPress sites.

Now off to play about with the new features of WordPress 2.5 and if I find anything post-worthy, I’ll tell you all about it.

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