After this last WordPress upgrade (2.6) I decided to clean up the script I use and post it here. It’s not as fast as using svn itself to upgrade, but I prefer to pull the latest version via svn, but drop it in manually — at least for now.

Anyway, I’d be cautious about running this until you’re very comfortable with the commands being executed. Until then, just use it as a list of instructions; even that will save tons of time vs. remembering the commands each time you want to upgrade.

Here’s basically what’s happening:

1. Pull down the latest, cutting-edge copy of WordPress
2. Back up your existing webroot
3. Delete your WordPress related content from your webroot
4. Copy the new WordPress content to your webroot
5. Replace your backed up content into the new install
6. Re-apply the permissions on your webroot
7. Test

And here’s the script:

!/bin/bash

Daniel Miessler's script for updating WordPress using SVN

Set variables

WEBROOT=/path/to/your/webroot

Change directories to your updated wordpress folder (create if necessary)

cd $WEBROOT/wordpress_svn/

Delete any old stuff in there

rm -rf $WEBROOT/wordpress_svn/*

Download the latest version of WordPress via SVN

svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/ .

Change back into your webroot

cd $WEBROOT

Backup your webroot (Really, really make sure this works before continuing!)

cp -a $WEBROOT ../htdocs_backup

Kill off all your Wordspress files in your webroot

rm -rf $WEBROOT/wp*

Copy in your updated WordPress files from the SVN folder

cp -a $WEBROOT/wordpress/* .

Replace your backed up/customized content from your backup

cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/plugins/ ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/themes ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/uploaded_content ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-config.php .

Re-apply proper permissions to your webroot

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755 
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
find . -print0 | xargs -0 chown apache

Finally, clear your cache and navigate to your site's admin page

update the database and make sure your plugins are working

http://$yoursite/wp-admin/

For any questions, email me at daniel@dmiessler.com

And let me know if you have any questions.