Every new release of any software application comes with improvements in graphical user interface, security and functional properties. If you have a blog based on the WordPress platform, there are several upgrade methods available to install the latest version of WordPress software.

In case of any software upgrade process you will have to begin with the backup procedures. For your old WordPress version, it is recommended to backup the database and all files existing in the root of the installation directory.

After you download the latest version of WordPress application and deactivate all plugins, you must delete the old files and folders with the following exceptions: wp-config.php, wp-content folder, wp-images folder and languages folder.The next step is to upload the new files on the server and to run the upgrade script located in the wp-admin directory.

Fortunately, a WordPress plugin that will perform automatically all these steps exist. It is called Wordpress Automatic upgrade and will upgrade your actual WordPress installation to the latest version available at the WordPress.org website. The upgrade process is composed of five steps that are strictly correlated with the manual operations presented earlier. After an upgrade step is performed, you must click a certain link to go to the next step.

The plugin provides also the option to automatically execute the next tasks (without the need to go through individual upgrade steps): files backup, database backup, latest WordPress distribution archive download, website maintenance mode initialization, plugins de-activation, files upgrade, installation upgrade and plugins re-activation.

In order to automate the process of your WordPress blog upgrade, you will have to download and install the Wordpress Automatic upgrade plugin and click the appropriate link to begin the upgrade operations in full automatic mode. This method of WordPress blog upgrade is easy to use, safe and works with all WordPress versions beginning with 1.5.

Download Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

If you wanna know more about the latest interface and features of the new version of wordpress you can check this interesting post at Devils Workshop