Check out these videos:

• My thoughts on why iThemes went GPL and what they means
• Chris, our rockstar code ninja, gives his expert opinion on when someone should upgrade WordPress

In addition to the interviews, I also gave an unsolicited testimonial for Main Street’s services here.

When should a person upgrade their WordPress blog? Frankly, this is not an easy question to answer.

The answer is completely dependent upon what type of site you are running, how important it is to ensure maximum uptime for the site, and how skilled you are at fixing problems like a failed WordPress upgrade. Even after determining a safe amount of time to wait before upgrading, there are a number of things that you should do before upgrading.

In this post, I hope that I can not only provide you with a base guideline for when you should upgrade but also how you should upgrade.

WordPress upgrades from an iThemes perspective

As a new WordPress version release approaches, we actively work to ensure that there aren’t any problems with our themes or plugins that would cause them to fail when the new version comes out. Personally, I run the latest development code for weeks on my personal sites and on my development sites to try my best to catch any and all bugs or potential problems.

So far, the 2.8 release has been kind to us. The internals of WordPress really didn’t change, so we didn’t have to update any of our code specifically for the new version release.

However, this isn’t to say that there will not be any problems. Problems always have a way of appearing out of nowhere. As always, if you find a problem with your theme after a new version release, please stop by our support forum and let us help you out with it.

Even though we have yet to find any issues related to our themes with the 2.8 release, some customers have still had issues after the new version release. So far, all of these have been caused either by plugins that have not been maintained or by custom code running on the customer’s site that was not tested on the new version. Please keep in mind that themes aren’t the only source of potential problems as a site’s plugins and customizations can also cause upgrade woes.

So, this brings me to some basic steps that should be followed to give you the best chance at a safe upgrade on your site.

Five things to do before upgrading WordPress

Now that WordPress is so easy to upgrade, you can simply click a button and let the software take care of it for you, it becomes very easy to forget that this process can fail. If the upgrade does fail, your site could be down for hours or days or you could lose valuable data from your site (posts, pages, etc).

Doing the following won’t guarantee that you won’t have problems, but adhering to these recommendations will go a long way toward minimizing the risks of upgrading and will allow you to recover better in case of lost data.

1. Make a backup of all your site data - Even though WordPress itself tells you to backup your data before upgrading, most people don’t. This is just inviting disaster as most people don’t have any backup strategy and losing any data means that it is lost forever.

   The easiest thing to do is go to Tools > Export and save an XML export of your site’s data. This backup isn’t a complete backup, but it does have all your site’s posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. This is the most valuable data on your site, so at the very least, save this export file before doing the upgrade.

   To get a more complete backup of your data, I recommend using the WP-DB-Backup plugin. This plugin allows you to create a backup of all your data, including any data that your plugins could have stored on your site.

2. Upgrade all of your plugins - Most plugin authors work hard to ensure that their plugin will not break your site. When a new WordPress version nears release, they will update their plugin as needed to ensure that it still works and that it won’t break your site. By upgrading your plugins first, you give yourself a better chance of avoiding a problem caused by plugins after the site upgrade.

3. Visit plugin and theme author websites - Beyond simply updating your plugins, visit your plugin and theme authors’ sites. If the code is still being actively developed, the author should have information about compatibilty with the new release. If there aren’t any updates, contact the author and ask them directly.

   When dealing with a plugin, if you can’t get a confirmation from the site or the author, I highly recommend that you disable the plugin before upgrading. You should also see if you can find anyone else running the plugin to see if they have any issues running the plugin on the new version.

   If your theme is no longer actively maintained or was a custom-built theme, test out the theme on a test site running the new version of WordPress first before upgrading your live site. I have more information on test sites toward the end of the post.

4. Disable all plugins - You’ve updated your plugins and ensured that they will work with the new version. Before doing the upgrade, you should disable all plugins to ensure that they will not cause any issues during or after the upgrade.Once the upgrade is complete, reactivate the plugins one at a time. If activating one of the plugins causes the site to break, go and delete that plugin’s folder inside wp-content/plugins. This will force the plugin to disable and should give you access to your site again.

5. Ask yourself if you need to upgrade now - Getting back to the main topic, you really should consider if you are 1) prepared enough for the upgrade and 2) your site is ready for the upgrade. I’ll talk about this in more depth in the next section.

How important is your site?

Your site is a source of income for you, has very high traffic, or could be severely hurt by any downtime. A new WordPress version just came out. Should you upgrade right now? Frankly, if you can’t accept any amount of downtime, wait a minimum of two weeks after the new version comes out. This will give the WordPress developers enough time to identify and fix any major issues that were found immediately after release. The same goes for giving your plugin and theme developers enough time to ensure that there aren’t any problems.

If your site is just a hobby site or you don’t mind having some downtime, go ahead and update as soon as you are ready. You could end up finding a problem that helps out the community.

To hit the main point again: If you rely on your site and maximum uptime is important to you, wait at least two weeks before upgrading to a new version of WordPress.

Safest choice: run a test site

I’m a huge fan of test sites. I actually have numerous test sites. I have a primary one that I use to test any code that I plan on moving over to my personal website. I have a primary development test site that I use to build and test new code for iThemes. I also have a running version of most of the major versions of WordPress.

This type of solution is overkill for most people, and I really have a hard time recommending it to the average user. However, I do think that every person who runs a WordPress site that needs to have maximum uptime should have at least one test site. What makes a good test site? I’m glad you asked.

1. The test site should reside on the same server as your live site. This will ensure that differences in core software on the servers won’t create unpredictable results. In other words, it creates a level playing field that makes your testing environment simulate your live site much better.

2. Ensure that your test site is a duplication of the live site. The data isn’t what is so important here; rather, you need to have the same version of WordPress installed complete with exact copies of the theme and every plugin. The theme and all active plugins on the live site need to be activated on the test site.

3. If you are concerned about people stumbling onto your test site, simply protect the site with a username and password. You can do this by creating .htaccess and .htpasswd files and then loading them onto your test site. Instructions can be found here.

Once you have your test site up and running, always run any upgrades, new plugin installations, theme modifications, etc through it first. If your test site breaks, breathe a sigh of relief that it isn’t your live site. If your test site keeps running, you have as good of an assurance as you’re going to get that your live site should work just fine after the change.

Closing thoughts

For those of you that don’t like the massive amount of information I’ve thrown up here and just want quick answers, here’s a summary:

1. Always backup your site data in Tools > Export before upgrading WordPress.

2. Always update all of your plugins before upgrading WordPress.

3. If your site’s operation is critical for your business, reputation, or because you don’t want the hassle, wait at least two weeks after a new version release before upgrading WordPress.

4. The best way of knowing what will happen to your site after an upgrade is to make a personal test site that has all the same plugins and theme activated and running the upgrade on the test site first.

iThemes and those on our team have said for a long, long time, individually and collectively, that, “We love WordPress and we support, appreciate and respect open source contributions that have made it possible.”

WordPress is indeed beautiful, easy-to-use, and powerful software - made possible through contributions by hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in its six-year existence. Whenever possible, I’ve sought out contributors like Mark Jaquith, Jacob Santos and founder Matt Mullenweg to express that appreciation.

But one of the differences we’ve had within the WordPress community has been with our theme licensing model. And since we opened for business in January 2008, we’ve wanted to find a way to be more aligned with the wishes and philosophies of those who have ultimately helped make our business possible in the first place by building such great software.

And frankly, that means licensing all our themes under the General Public License, just like WordPress is.

So after much deliberation within our team and business partners, iThemes has decided to switch our licensing packages to the GPL, from our current model, effective immediately.

Here are some of the underlying reasons why we’re making this switch and being open and honest about it to all:

• Ultimately, we want to do what’s best for the WordPress - this is a strong signal of support from us to say we love and embrace open source software and WordPress
• We want to be a respected and valued member of the WordPress community - part of this move is for our team, like our developers Chris and Nathan, to be able to participate and contribute freely in the development of WordPress without restraint or hindrance for the better of … WORDPRESS
• What helps WordPress, helps you (our customer and the grand community), and ultimately helps us (and vice versa - it’s reciprocal) - that means that when we develop a cool feature on top of WordPress, it can easily be included back into the core software of WordPress to improve and innovate together in true open source fashion that leverages talent across the world in different realms, businesses, etc.
• Being open source is sooooo web 2.0 and the future and has tangible benefits for all - We feel this switch is a celebration for open source philosophy that has made WordPress so popular and we hope our customers and others will be as excited as we are to move in this direction!

What does this mean for past customers and future ones?

For the bulk of our past customers (previous single use customers), you won’t notice or care about it because it won’t affect you. But essentially, it means you can use your themes purchased in the past on multiple websites and blogs and you’ll get the same support we’ve offered in the past.  Just know that you’re also contributing to something bigger in terms of WordPress by your continued support of iThemes!

For customers who are designers and developers, this is a great day …. as it means lower prices and more freedom. There may even be broader ways where you can help us with features and fixes. And we welcome that!

For everyone who loves WordPress and looking for a great, high-quality WP theme, it means you can celebrate with us as we’re 100% aligned with those behind this amazing piece of software! In essence, we’re supporting WordPress by supporting the ideas that make it possible.

***

I’m sure there will be many questions and some concerns. We understand that and we’ll try our best to answer them as best we can.

But in the meantime, go write a blog post about how great WordPress is (WP 2.8 just released today), and thank those who contribute to it by embracing open source philosophies with their time and talent!

–Cory Miller
Founder
iThemes.com

Many of our customers have asked for the ability to more easily modify our themes. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to go through some of our code and add the ability to customize certain parts of the theme easily by using filters.

These initial changes are going to be most useful to developers that use our themes to develop sites for clients, but they can also be used by anyone that would like to customize the back-end of our themes. With these new filters, you can modify the name of the main theme tab, change the “Start Here” text of the first theme sub-menu, and change the URL used for the content of the Start Here page.

In order for you to successfully make use of these new filters, please ensure that your theme has the latest version of the lib/tutorials code. The current version as of this writing is 1.1.2. You can check the version in the lib/tutorials/tutorials.php file.

Modifying the Theme Menu Name

With this latest version of the lib/tutorials code, all the themes are now standardized to use “My Theme” for the main theme menu name. This should help make the experience of using our themes more consistent as you change from theme to theme and should reduce confusion on some of our video tutorials going forward.

You can easily change the theme menu name by using the it_tutorials_top_menu_name filter. For example:

function it_modify_top_menu_name( $name ) {
    return "Chris' Theme";
}
add_filter( 'it_tutorials_top_menu_name', 'it_modify_top_menu_name' );

A good place to put this code is in the theme’s functions.php file.

Modifying Start Here Menu Name and Page Content

The first link under the theme menu has the text “Start Here”. This page is used to link people to tutorials so that they can more easily use the features of the themes. The content shown on the Start Here page is actually an external HTML page that is shown inside of an iframe.

Other developers or end users may have other uses for this page, so two filters were added: a filter to modify the menu link text (it_tutorials_menu_name) and a filter to modify the URL for the content shown inside the iframe (it_tutorials_filter_url). The following example shows an example of using these filters.

function it_modify_tutorial_menu_name( $name ) {
    return "Useful Links";
}
add_filter( 'it_tutorials_menu_name', 'it_modify_tutorial_menu_name' );

function it_modify_tutorial_url( $url ) {
   return "http://yourdomain.com/helpful_links.html";
}
add_filter( 'it_tutorials_filter_url', 'it_modify_tutorials_url' );

As before, a good place for this code is in the theme’s functions.php file.

Future Themes, Features, and Filters

These filters aren’t the only ones that will be added. Eventually, many of the existing features will have similar filters added to them to enable some basic customization of the theme back-end.

All current development is being done with attention to areas where other developers or users would like to make changes to the way a theme works. I look forward to providing everyone with more options in customizing our themes without having to go digging around in the code.

If you have any ideas for hooks or features that you’d like to see in our themes, you can send them directly to me at chris@ithemes.com or post about them on our forum.

If you’re unfamiliar with WordCamps these are 1- or 2-day conferences designed to talk about everything WordPress (from using it as a CMS, to tips on blogging better), networking (we’ve met a lot of great people at these events), and just fun socializing (there’s usually meetups afterward).

Register for the Dallas WordCamp here and let us know in the comments that you’re going so we can look for you!

Here are the details:

• Must purchase a theme after June 1, 2009
• Special bonus offer valid for new iThemes customers only after June 1, 2009

Once you’ve bought your theme and logged into the new iThemes Members Area, contact us and we’ll give you a coupon to redeem your free Billboard Plugin.

BUY YOUR THEME TODAY!

Features include:

• Featured Images script
• 4 Page Templates
• Multi-level Dropdown Menus

Get purchase information here and take it for a test drive here

Although WordPress is billed as blog software, I’ve personally used it to power dozens of websites — from churches to businesses and my own sites. Time and time again, I’ve found WordPress to be a powerful, yet simple content management system.

And I took that background into my business plans for iThemes …. I wanted to build great themes for websites, and not just blogs, to really showcase how WP can be used in this fashion.

Anyway, here are a couple of items that I think could be added (or refined) within WordPress to make an even BETTER CMS …

Disclaimer: I realize that many of these could and are WordPress plugins … but if they were seamlesslsy integrated into the software, WOW, game over! And again, this is just my wish list.

Here goes:

1. WYSIWYG Widgets

I’ve heard the widget system is going to get some tweaks in 2.8. Widgets are a whole other post as they need some help, badly, and I hope 2.8 will get closer to being easy-to-use for the beginning user.

But every time I’ve helped someone set up their site using WordPress, they invariably get hung up on widgets. And if there were an elegant way to include WYSIWYG widget option, it’d make WordPress THE best CMS I’ve ever used.

The functionality could be simple …. just bold, italics, lists, alignment … and a place to easily upload and place photos in a widget WITHOUT having to upload via FTP or the Media Library and copy and paste code … that most users don’t know.

This is THE wish list item I would want over all others at this point.

2. Dashboard Reordering

WordPress is blog software. Automattic and the others behind it have made it clear through some of the things they’ve done that they want to continue building it for blogging. And that’s awesome!

But almost every time I’ve showed a business web client how to use WordPress, they invariably ask what a Post is.

To make WordPress an even better CMS, there should be a function that allows you to reorder the Dashboard to push down the Post button and list and put Pages in its place. Or even hide the blogging function as needed and appropriate.

3. Embedded Tutorials

iThemes has a robust set of WordPress tutorials and we even offering unbranded ones in our All Access Pass, but it’d be great for freelance designers if they could give clients a built-in tutorial system to watch video screecasts from within the WP Dashboard.

By the way, we’re working on a plugin for this …

4. Calendar

I hate to even mention a Calendar function. I think calendars are OVERBLOWN in usefulness … they are hard to maintain and practically useless in my opinion. But businesses ask about them and it’s one of the main weaknesses I see in using WP as a CMS.

The few plugins I’ve seen have flaws. If someone came up with an elegant solution, I’d love to hear about it! And so would the hundreds of designers out there building WP websites.

***

What about you? What are your requests and suggestions for making WordPress into an even more powerful CMS?

And although we’ve helped many of you get your WP site going and built video and post tutorials to assist you, we also know that often … you don’t want to mess with all that!

You’re busy … you have other things to attend to with your business … and frankly, you shouldn’t be asked to get your hands dirty or waste your time in something that isn’t your primary business.

Many of you just want to use the powerful features of WordPress (like easy posting and managing of your website) and a great theme (that is search engine optimized to give you maximum exposure online) … WITHOUT the hassle.

So today, we’re unveiling our new premium WordPress hosting solution at iThemes.

Yes, we still endorse and love HostGator … for basic web hosting, you can’t beat them. They’re affordable and awesome at customer service.

BUT … here’s why you might want to go with iThemes WordPress Hosting …

• We install WordPress for you
• You get your choice of any iThemes WP theme loaded at no charge ($79.95 value)
• AND … you get our awesome Billboard plugin loaded at no charge ($39.95 value)

No hassles. No fuss. And when we’re done, we give you the keys to just start blogging and adding great content.

If you’d like to order the iThemes WordPress Hosting package, find out more on our sales page, or email us with any questions.

OH! If you’ve already purchased a WP theme from iThemes, you qualify for an $80 discount off your first year of hosting with us, click here to let us know.

Buy any iThemes multi-use theme package in May 2009 and you’ll get a free single-use copy of FlexxTheme Professional ($79.95) — our hottest version.

Here are the details:

• Must purchase a multi-use theme package of one of our themes between May 1-31, 2009
• Special bonus offer valid for new iThemes customers only for May 1-31, 2009

Once you’ve bought your theme and logged into the new iThemes Members Area, contact us and we’ll give you a coupon to redeem your free FlexxTheme Pro (single use).

BUY YOUR THEME TODAY!