What are the best practices for updating?

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Do not just upgrade immediately. Take the time you need for an informed decision. And make a backup, of course. 🙂

  1. Read the changelog for the new version. Example for 3.4.1. The blog announcements and the Codex pages are not complete.

  2. Test the upgrade with an exact copy of your production site, including plugins and themes.

    • Add, change and delete an user, a post, a term (tag, category).
    • Log out, log in, test all active user roles.
    • Test all custom JavaScripts. jQuery for example was added once so late in the pre-release process that plugin authors could not adjust their code in time.

  3. If you are not a developer and it is not a minor release (where just the third number changes) wait some days, look for the trouble-shooting thread in the wordpress.org forums. Example for 3.4. Minor security updates are usually safe.

  4. If you use the web interface to upgrade or SSH/FTP doesn’t really matter anymore.

  5. Plugin compatibility has to be tested. There is no other way to know how they play together.

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