Matching Clothes For Your Blog

I thought I would pick-up where I left off yesterday, with the discussion of WordPress Databases. I understand that this is not good material for the Newbie Blogger, but it is all that I have to write about at the moment.

Yes, don’t forget to back-up that database, and think before you leap when adding any new plug-in. It seems these days the trend is to avoid plug-ins. Indeed with the rise of child themes, the focus tends to be in integrating those plug-ins that are deemed critical. Even the WordPress Software is integrating some of these ideas with every upgrade.

Which brings me to my point for the day here. When you go to upgrade your WordPress Software, you should make a check of your database. It doesn’t take long before the database becomes outdated itself. As of the first of next year I understand that WordPress will no longer support MySQL 4.0, announcing an end of life on July 23, 2010.

WordPress will be dropping support for MySQL 4 after WordPress 3.1. Fewer than 6 percent of WordPress users are running MySQL 4. The new required MySQL version for WordPress 3.2 will be 5.0.15. As of the date of this post I’m running 5.1.48. So as you can see, WordPress is not going to be that far behind in respect to the development of MySQL.

WordPress is actually in the process of developing a special tool, ( I’ll call it software for now, instead of a plug-in ) that will give you all of the critical information as it relates to your Blog and MySQL. Noting that if you are not in compliance, your Blog will not work.

You don’t necessarily have to upgrade your database when you go to upgrade your WordPress Software, but it’s a pretty good idea. I like to “match” the latest version of WordPress with the latest version of MySQL. So when I upgrade WordPress; I upgrade MySQL. I don’t rush out and upgrade every single time. About once a year does it for me; at which time WordPress has gone through about four or five upgrades, but you really don’t need the latest and greatest. That’s inviting real trouble!

Doing things this way will give you an adrenalin rush and let you know that you are alive for sure. But I’ll mention this ……… I have never had a technical problem with one of my Blogs when I keep everything up to speed under the hood. And who needs a WordPress crisis at any point in time?