I learned the hard way that just because Wordpress releases an upgrade does not mean that I have to immediately upload it. It turned out that Wordpress 2.3.2 was not compatible with my blog Table for Five for some reason, even though I have 2.3.1 running on this blog, MomReviews, and MomCooks with no problems. I figured when I got around to upgrading T45, I would go ahead and use 2.3.2, which was supposed to be even better. Instead, I lost all of my categories. As in, all of my posts showed up as uncategorized.  The category widget on my sidebar was blank, and the Manage->Categories page was blank as well. To say it freaked me out would be a vast understatement.

Now obviously I could have done something wrong when I uploaded the new files, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t upgrade. But it’s important to backup everything, and often. Fortunately, I had saved Wordpress 2.2 when I upgraded to that version, so I was able to restore my blog back to that version of WP. I recommended using FTP to transfer all of your current files (anything that starts with wp-) directly to your desktop so they are easy to transfer back over if something goes wrong.

I’m not planning to attempt the upgrade again until at least this weekend, in case of another malfunction. I wish there was an easier way, because with each upgrade, I have to pick a new blog theme that is compatible (why can’t I just make changes to an existing theme to make it compatible?), change my plugins, it’s a pain. But that’s the price I pay for having a self-hosted blog I guess. It’s not like I’m going to go back to Blogger or anything