A lot of work has gone into making the upgrade process as smooth as possible for you, and it does work. Yes it does. Really. Just do EXACTLY what is listed here and all will be good. Please don't think you can skip bits, or that you know better - you'll just end up frustrated and posting to the forums.

Read this first and if you are unsure, and post any questions to the forums. It is easier to get things right than fix a mistake you have made because of an uncertainty.

You will need:

• Time. Do not do this when you are tired or in a rush.
• FTP client.
• Text editor. Do NOT use a Word Processor for anything here. WordPad (PC) BBEdit (Mac) are fine. Do NOT use Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive either.

On your desktop, create a new folder called "WP files". Into this, download the following files from your 1.2 template (yes, I know you've downloaded them once, but you need to do this okay ?)

1. index.php
2. wp-comments.php
3. wp-comments-popup.php
4. wp-config.php
5. wp-layout.css
6. IF you use Kubrick, also download kubrick-searchform.php

Also download any other files which you have changed a lot - an example would be vars.php if you have changed smilies.
Your backup is just that - a backup - and these files will become altered which is why the double download.

Now we need to download a few more files. On your desktop, create a new folders called "My Plugs". Into this, download all your plugins and all other folders that may be inside your plugins directory on your site.

Adjust your files #1

The following changes are needed so that your current layout is carried through into the upgraded blog. Do all of this using the files you downloaded seperately:

1. Open your index.php in your text editor.
   • Comment out the wp-blog-header require line at the top of index.php. Do this by putting // at the start of each line.

     <?php
     //* Don't remove this line. */
     //require('./wp-blog-header.php');
     ?>

   • Update the stylesheet import line in index.php. Replace this:
     @import url( <?php echo get_settings('siteurl'); ?>/wp-layout.css );
     with this:
     

     @import url( <?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?> );

   • IF you use Kubrick, you will have a line like this:
     <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo get_settings('siteurl'); ?>/wp-layout.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
     you must change that to this (for Kubrick layouts only remember):
     

     <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

   • Update the wp-comments include line in index.php. Replace this:
     <?php include(ABSPATH . 'wp-comments.php'); ?>
     with this:
     

     <?php comments_template(); ?>

   • Now save index.php
   • Rename wp-comments.php to comments.php
   • Open wp-comments-popup.php. Find this line at the top : require ('wp-blog-header.php');
     You must comment out that line:

     // require ('wp-blog-header.php');

     The top of your wp-comments-popup.php must look like this:

     <?php
     /* Don't remove these lines. */
     $blog = 1;
     //require ('wp-blog-header.php');
     add_filter('comment_text', 'popuplinks');
     

     Save the file.
   • Rename wp-comments-popup.php as comments-popup.php
   • Add a theme header to wp-layout.css. Something like this (you can just copy and paste this for now):
     

     /*
     Theme Name: My Original layout
     Theme URI: http://myblog.com/
     Description: Your theme
     Version: 1
     Author: You
     Author URI: http://myblog.com/
     */

   • Now rename wp-layout.css to style.css.
2. You should now have 6 files:
   1. index.php
   2. comments.php
   3. comments-popup.php
   4. style.css
   5. wp-config.php
   6. IF you use Kubrick, you will have 6 files - kubrick-searchform.php
3. Now create a folder called "Carrots" and put the first 4 files there into that folder (and searchform.php if you use Kubrick).

1. Login to your admin panel and DEACTIVATE every plugin. (This is VERY important !)
2. Leave your /wp-images directory alone.
3. DELETE the /wp-admin directory.
4. DELETE the /wp-includes directory.
5. DELETE the /wp-content directory.

Now delete all these WP files. All of them. If you have 1.2, 1.2.1 or 1.2.2 then here is a list of what needs deleting:

• index.php
• print.css
• wp-atom.php
• wp-blog-header.php
• wp-comments-popup.php
• wp-comments-post.php
• wp-comments-reply.php
• wp-comments.php
• wp-commentsrss2.php
• wp-feed.php
• wp-layout.css
• wp-links-opml.php
• wp-locations.php
• wp-login.php
• wp-mail.php
• wp-pass.php
• wp-rdf.php
• wp-register.php
• wp-rss.php
• wp-rss2.php
• wp-settings.php
• wp-trackback.php
• wp.php
• xmlrpc.php

If you just overwrite files, you WILL get errors. Probably a whole lot of them. DELETE instead

Specifically for this guide, the following people should be thanked:
Ryan Boren - not only for writing lots of code in the first place, but for providing the skeleton guide from which this page has arisen.
And everyone here has helped by volunteering their time (in response to a post on my blog) by testing this guide, pointing out gaps, making suggestions and otherwise helping so that your WordPress upgrade is made as smooth as possible. In alpha order, they are: |Memo|, AJ, Bryan, ch3wbacca, Charlie, Cyndy, Gary, Shadow, SLH, Terry, Tor