The folks have updated WordPress again and I have been evaluating different methods of upgrading. The standard method works but I have been wanting to streamline the process for remote hosts.
For my locally hosted blog I used the Updating WordPress with Subversion method. This is pretty slick! I had previously checked out a copy of WordPress using Subversion and integrated the wp-content and a couple other files into the working copy. All I had to do this morning was to crank up TortoiseSVN on the checked out directory, change its tag to 2.3, and let Subversion do the rest. When I logged in as Admin, it updated the database. I did get some database errors about duplicate entries into wp_terms and wp_term_taxonomy but I do not think these errors are critical since this is the blog I use to test changes with. Its pretty funky!
Yesterday I got carried away again and did a little research on using Subversion on remote hosts. I found that some host providers provide it but most do not it. My host provider, bluehost.com, does not provide Subversion support directly but I found a post on a forum that described a method I could use to install it. I kind of followed their instructions. It is working as a client and here are my instructions.
- Log in using SSH. I used PuTTy.
- Create a bin directory.
- Edit the .bashrc file to add the path statement to the bin directory.
- Create a source directory and then change to this directory.
- Use wget to download the tar version of both the Subversion package and the dependencies package.
- Untar both packages.
- Run configure, make, and then make install. You should have several executables in the bin directory.
- Make sure that subversion works by typing in “svn –version”.
Here is the command line version:
mkdir ~/bin # Use your favorite editor to edit the .bashrc file and add the path statement to the bin directory mkdir ~/src # get the subversion and dependencies tarballs cd ~/src wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.5.tar.gz wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.gz tar -xzf subversion-1.4.5.tar.gz tar -xzf subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.gz # Build it cd subversion-1.4.3 ./configure --prefix=$HOME --without-berkeley-db --with-zlib --with-ssl make make install # check it works! svn --version
I am now able to check out a copy of WordPress and update it on my bluehost.com website. I am not sure this is much better than the WPAU plugin I used recently. I will probably continue to play with both methods. I am still working at setting up a repository on bluehost. I do not mind using the Subversion client to update the WordPress files but I would like my bluehost account to be a server for the wp-content files since I would like version control on my theme files. It would be nice if the folks at bluehost decided to directly support Subversion, too.