I’ve been running with this WordPress template for a very long time, and with the WP software back at version 2.5 (it’s up to 3.1.3 now). In the last week, though, some people have reported to me that the blog has been forwarding them to dodgy-looking sites involuntarily, which suggests to me that the time for stasis is long past.
Anyone up for coaching me through an upgrade (and back-up) process?
Easiest is to remove everything but the /wp-content/ folder and wp-config.php, then upload the latest version. At some point, WP added a one-click upgrade process internal to WP which’ll make it easier for further upgrades (especially if Apache has owner/write permissions for your site root — as in a PHP [f]cgi or suhosin setup).
There were some dependencies that I no longer remember between WP versions and MySQL and PHP versions that kept me on an old version for a long time. But I think if you’re on 2.5 your upgrade path is pretty straightforward.
BUT before you do anything else – export your site as xml and save a copy locally. In a worst case, you’ll have a good chance at re-importing everything into a new clean WP instance if the automatic updating implodes horribly.
http://tbxstudio.com/blog-import-and-blog-export-with-wordpress/