Lately I’ve had a few people mention to me that their auto upgrade feature for WordPress (located in the WordPress dashboard under Tools) doesn’t work. In my experience, auto upgrades fail because plugins sometimes cause a conflict with the upgrade process.

If you’re having problems with the auto upgrade feature, make sure to deactivate all your plugins first.

If you’re still having issues, try switching your theme over to the default theme WordPress comes with. Doing these two things reverts WordPress back to its default state and will give your auto upgrade the best chance for compatibility.

If, however, after doing those two things your auto upgrade feature still won’t work, all is not lost. Here’s a video I did on how to manually upgrade WordPress. Because this process will take a few extra minutes longer than the auto upgrade feature, you may want to put your site in maintenance mode to let your customers know you’ll be right back. I show you how to do that in the video and the code needed is shown for your convenience below the video.

If you ever have any issues installing or upgrading, keep in mind I can do this for you. It costs $50 and you also get a full backup of your site.

Update: Keith Davis commented below and mentioned he had an issue watching the video. If you run into any issues, I also have the tutorial on my YouTube channel. Unfortunately, since YouTube only allows 10 minute videos, I had to separate the tutorial into 4 separate videos. The size is a little smaller, but if you enlarge it to full screen it shows pretty well. Here they are:

1. YouTube version video 1
2. YouTube version video 2
3. YouTube version video 3
4. YouTube version video 4

How To Create A Simple Maintenance Page

You could always download a WordPress maintenance mode plugin, but in this case it probably won’t work. When you follow the upgrade instructions on WordPress.org, you’ll notice it says to deactivate all your plugins.

So, here’s how to create a custom maintenance page without a plugin.

Step 1

Create a simple html file and place it in your blog’s root directory. Name it something like, maintenance.html. Inside the maintenance.html file you can put anything you want. “Hi. I’m out to lunch for a few moments while the construction crew is busy at work . . .”

But why stop there? Your site is better than that. Customize the page with your site’s colors and images. Maybe add a video or your latest blog post. CSSgirl wrote some tips and shows some examples on the topic of creating a memorable maintenance page.

Step 2

Ok so now you have your maintenance.html page set up, the next step is to redirect everyone to it while you’re doing your upgrade.

Navigate to your blog’s root directory in your web hosting control panel and open your .htaccess file.

Once opened, you’re going to add this code at the top:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

The yellow parts above are the areas you need to change. Visit What is my IP address? to find your IP address and put those numbers in under the first yellow highlight. Next add the url path to your own maintenance page in the second yellow part.

And that should do it. Your site should now show a maintenance page to everyone except you (your IP address was whitelisted). To see what everyone else sees, add a # sign in front of the IP line:

# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25

The # comments lines out.

When you’re finished, leave the code in your .htaccess file for next time. To disable the code, just add a # in front of each line:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
# Options +FollowSymlinks
# RewriteEngine on
# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
# RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

Remember, if you need help with upgrades or WordPress security, visit the blog services page and use the contact form there to get in touch with me.

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1. WordPress Management: Cleaning Up Your Root Folder
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3. How To Install WordPress Manually and Why Beginners Should Do It
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