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What to do if a WordPress automatic upgrade fails

If you’ve ever been upgrading a WordPress installation and had it fail, leaving you in the dark depths of maintenance mode, you’ll agree with me that it can be quite a headache. Much like a site launch or a database move, it can take either 5 minutes, or 5 hours, but it never seems to fall in between.

So if you start the WordPress upgrade and it gets locked up and leaves you hangin’, here’s what you do:

Note: You should always backup your database and wp-content directory before beginning a WordPress update, even an automatic one. Also, you should ALWAYS rename a default theme like TwentyTen to a different name or it might get overwritten in an automatic update.

1) Download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org

2) With an FTP program (FileZilla for Mac/PC, Cyberduck for Mac; I prefer Transmit, bit it ain’t free). Upload the entire WordPress install, except for the wp-content folder. This should overwrite all files in the WordPress Core. Unless you’ve messed with the core (which you shouldn’t have), this will not affect your files.

3) Remove the file called “.maintenance” from your site’s root directory (this is what is triggering the maintenance message).

4) Navigate to the appropriate wp-admin folder. WordPress will ask you to upgrade the database. Click the button and your back to where you were before, only now your upgraded.

I hope someone finds this helpful.