Things to know when updating a Wordpress one-click install

I just finished updating the theme for Portland Tillamook Cooperative Preschool’s Web site using the Dreamhost one-click installer. (Well, it was their one-click updater really.)

Two very valuable lessons were learned.

One, Dreamhost likes to overwrite any existing themes with the same names (directories) as the themes installed with their default. This means anyone who has simply edited a default theme will lose their edits.

The second lesson I learned is that their default backup of the site to a directory with “.old” at the end is a very handy failsafe. Oddly enough, I did not have a local copy saved before clicking “upgrade.” A rare data-related mistake that I will not repeat. On a final note, I certainly appreciate that Dreamhost installs some rather interesting themes with their one-click installer, but I wish it weren’t so many. It really slows down the page load on presentations. It also takes a while to delete them all.