Wow, I love how my blog feels fresh again. How do you like the new look?

Today, I finally mustered enough courage to hit the “Update” button on my admin dashboard and level up this blog to WordPress 3.0.

And to commemorate the new version of WordPress, I decided to give my blog a new look too. It’s the new All Jayme on WordPress 3.0.

The back story

For the past weeks, I’ve been waiting for an upgrade option in my Cpanel through Fantastico. But weeks have passed since WordPress 3.0 has been released, still no upgrade link.

If you’re a WordPress user like me, I guess you’d agree that it’s kinda annoying to see that notice on top of the dashboard all the time reminding you to upgrade. I even tried asking support from my webhost but as it turned out they had no control over Fantastico.

Why was this such a big deal for me? Well, more than two years ago, my blog went bonkers when I carelessly hit Upgrade to WordPress 2.3. I was able to sort things out despite my panic though it took some serious brain wracking to restore everything back to normal.

As I mentioned in that post, I changed my layout to celebrate my blog’s second lease on life.

When I upgraded to WP 2.5.,  I let Fantastico do its job and everything went smoothly. I also changed to a new layout again at that time to complement the new WP version.

Upgrading to WP 3.0 within the blog dashboard

Since I couldn’t wait for Fantastico to release an upgrade script, I decided to try the Update button found in the WordPress dashboard just to get it over with. To be extra careful, I tried it first on a test blog to see if everything will work smoothly.

After I hit the Update button, I was taken to the Upgrade page and presented with two buttons: to update automatically or to download the core files to update manually.Of course, I hit the left button because automatic install is easy peasy.

Notice that it says you need to back up your database files to be safe. But I didn’t do that anymore because the test blog had little content. If you’re upgrading your actual blog, do back up your files just to be on the safe side.

After hitting Upgrade Automatically, this is what appeared on the page. It only took a few seconds and the update was successful.

This is the first time I tried the Update button and it’s pretty fast and easy. Now that I know that this works, I won’t have to rely on Fantastico anymore for updates and I can upgrade right away when a new WP version is released.

I haven’t explored 3.0′s full features yet but it looks pretty much the same.

Now all my blogs are running on 3.0. . Some are lined up to undergo a major redesign too.

I just realized, I wasn’t able to take screenshots of my previous designs. It would have been great to see how my blog has evolved through the years.

Redirection

I’ve actually been thinking about what direction to take with my blogs.  Next month, All Jayme will celebrate its third anniversary.

So far, I’ve only been winging it with blogging here but I now feel like I want to take it the next level too and make it better.

Does that make sense? My mind has been swimming in all things geeky in the last few hours.

Anyway, it’s past 2 a.m. and I better get some sleep.

Happy pretty Monday everyone!

P.S.

If you ever need help with getting set up with a self – hosted WordPress blog or with tweaking your blog design, let me know, maybe I could help. I’m no blogging diva but I’ve learned enough to set up 11 blogs.

Tagged as: Blogging, update wordpress, Wordpress 3.0