Upgrading to WordPress 2.0
When I first started this blog back in March I decided use code directly out of the WordPress Subversion repository, rather than doing the sensible thing and using the stable release. During the first few months I updated the code from svn every couple of days, until an update relied on an underlying database change that of course wouldn’t get applied by just updating the code. At this point I stopped updating the code, and was stuck using an 1.6-alpha version of WordPress. This made me a little bit nervous from a security standpoint, but I removed the xmlrpc.php file and just dealt with it.
So when I heard that WordPress 2.0 had been released, I was anxious to upgrade. My only concern was that the database might have changed in a way that would make it difficult to import the data from my 1.6-alpha schema. Well, as it turns out, everything was extremely easy.
First I dumped the old database using `mysqldump -u username -c -t -Q -p database`. Then I set up a new site and went through the default WordPress installation procedure. I then deleted all the data from the new tables and tried to import the dumpfile. That failed because the new wp_users table did not have a user_level column. I ran `alter table wp_users add column user_level int(2) after user_registered;` and then the import worked perfectly. I copied my theme files over, as well as my images, favicon and gallery and then moved the new WordPress directory into place, and everything worked! Sweet!
Recently I made a comment on a mailing list that if I were starting a blog now that I would choose Typo. That is probably still true, but I have to say, WordPress 2.0 is very, very nice. There is a nice list of the new features on the development blog. So if you are running WordPress and you have a few minutes, go upgrade.