I have been suffering in the clutches of this horrible situation for months. I didn’t know which way to turn, lost in indecision and fear. Was I the only person on Earth with this problem? I didn’t think so, but I was afraid to ask. I just tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away.
Every time I logged in, there it was. Letters in bold proclaimed the horrid news : “Your WordPress installation is incredibly old, useless and outdated. You must upgrade now! Upgrading is more important than the lives of your family members. We can’t tell you what will happen to you if you don’t upgrade, but it’ll be bad. You won’t feel secure ever again unless you upgrade to the newest version. Upgrade now, or Die!”
I wanted to upgrade right away, so naturally I went to check out the instructions at WordPress. I read them over and over and felt pretty stupid because I barely understood a word of it! It sounded like I needed to make a backup copy of My SQuirreL Database, whatever that was. I didn’t even know my blog was squirreling away files like that! It was too scary, so I tried to forget about it.
But everywhere I looked, someone was flaunting their newer version of WordPress. “Look at my blog!” they would exclaim. “It is much more shiny than yours and all the security leaks are plugged! I am so happy and up to date, I could just Twitter all day!” I just grumbled inside and turned my back on these keep up with the Joneses smartass genius bloggers.
Months went by, and no one hacked this blog through one of these so called security leaks. I knew that it was only a matter of time before someone pointed at our antique coding and laughed, though. I was ashamed to use my WordPress at the mall for fear of public humiliation.
Eventually, I wanted to use a plugin that wasn’t compatible with my ancient WordPress dinosaur code. I had to decide to stay medieval or to move into the new era. I bit the bullet and read the upgrade tutorials over and over until I thought I knew how to backup My SQuirreL’s datatabase and give my files permission to go out and play.
The big moment had arrived. I went ahead and backed up. I deleted files. I uploaded files. I lit incence and made a magic circle on the floor, then chanted arcane words in a long dead forgotten language. I applied the best anti wrinkle cream money could buy. My relief was palpable when I discovered the upgrade worked!
A week went by, and My SQuirreL was happy in his new database. All seemed well. All of my plugins got upgraded. Life went on. And then, suddenly, there was a new message on the dashboard: “WordPress 2.6.2 is available! Please update now.” Arggghh!
Haven’t all these people heard, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?