OK, WordPress just came out with a minor upgrade the other day. I decided to go ahead and play with this one for several reasons. First, for all that this is minor, there’s a pretty good security patch to it, the “nonce” security key that reduces the chance of someone hacking their way into the admin panel. Second, a more major upgrade (2.1) is planned for the end of summer and this would be good practice before then.

Note that some minor bugs have already been found with 2.03 (!) and a plugin released to fix those issues, which I include in the steps below. Also, if you have modified any of these files that get replaced, you may have to merge the changes with the new files. For example, I modified my rss feeder to include an image. I’ll diff the new file with my old one and if the only changes are mine, put mine back in, otherwise patch my changes into the new file.

Going from WordPress 2.0.2 to 2.0.3

1. First back up your installation. Back up both the files in your wordpress directory and also your database. (If you haven’t got this plugin, I highly recommend it.)
2. Remove the wp-admin directory
3. Remove the directory. (If you added any translation/language files/directories, keep these.)
4. Remove all the files in the directory where WP is installed, except wp-config.php.
5. Download and unpack 2.0.3. Do this in a separate directory, so you can control which files and directories you copy over.
6. Install the new directories wp-admin and .
7. Install the files of the top directory, except for wp-config-sample.php.
8. On entering the admin panel after this, you will see the following message:
   “Your database is out-of-date. Please upgrade” with the link to update the database. Follow the directions.

9. Remove the files wp-admin/upgrade.php and wp-admin/install.php.
10. Download the plugin fix here. Add and activate, no further editing needed.

(Props to blogpocket for the initial how-to list, which I translated & added commentary.)