Not a great way to start a blog and a bit of a boring first post but hey, it’s my blog, I can do what I want.
This is more of a personal reference post. It’s the info I need to hand to keep my wordpress install up to date and secure
Tracking Stable Versions
This section of the article assumes you have decided you want to have your blog run a stable version of WordPress. If you would rather run an unstable version in development, go back to the “Tracking Trunk” section above. If your blog had already been installed by the standard method, read the “Converting” section at the end of the article.
The next thing you will need to do is decide which exact version of WordPress you would like to install. The examples in this section assume you want to install particular version numbers; if you want to install a different version, substitute that version number.
New Install
To install a fresh copy of WordPress, type the following at your command prompt, starting from the directory above where you want to install WordPress. These commands will create a directory “blog” for your blog, and then check out (Subversion command “co”), or extract from the repository (Subversion command “export”), the stable version of WordPress you have chosen. Do not type the “$” characters — they are just indications of the command prompt. Here are the commands (assuming the version you want is 2.7.1):
$ mkdir blog
$ cd blog
$ svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.1 .
The period at the end of the command is very important – it makes sure that downloaded files from the repository end up in the current directory; leave off that dot and you’ll end up creating a new installation directory (which would be called “tags/2.7.1“), which is not what you want if the current directory is the intended installation directory.
When download is complete, edit wp-config.php, then access your blog URL to complete installation, as in the standard WordPress installation instructions.
Updating to a New Stable Version
The next time WordPress releases a new version, you will probably want to upgrade to that version. To do that, log in and use the Subversion “switch” command (sw) to switch to a new version (assuming the new version is 2.7.1):
$ cd blog
$ svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.1/ .
Doing so will overwrite any changed WordPress-provided files, while leaving any custom or privately owned files, plugins, and themes alone. In other words, it should be safe (but make a backup, just in case).
Run the usual wp-admin/upgrade.php and you’re done.
Finding Released Versions
You can visit http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags, the “tags” section of the Subversion repository, to find the list of tagged versions of WordPress.
The above is an excerpt from the wordpress article Installing/Updating WordPress with Subversion, read the full how to, it’s worth it
