Upgrade Wordpress Database from 2.6 to 3.2

Question

I'm trying to migrate an old wordpress site to a new host - the old installation hasn't been updated for a while and is still on 2.6.5 while the new install is 3.2.1 (current). Unfortunately the old front end is currently not working, so I can't use anything there.

I'm wondering if there's a tool or way to update the existing 2.6.5 database to be compatible with 3.2.1 so that I can just load all of the existing data into the new system via a SQL query.

Answer 1

Upgrade by simply overwriting the new version of WordPress files, you will get the prompt of upgrading the database when logged in. Do backup the files & database before trying to do anything so that you can always revert back to the old state in case something goes wrong.

Most probably the upgrade will work directly without doing incremental upgrades. And if you would want to, then you can get any version of WordPress like this http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9.zip Change the version in the URL according to the version you want.

Answer 2

If Ashframe's solution doesn't work, try upgrading step by step, for example, first to 2.8, to 3.0, 3.1 and to 3.2. Although I don't know where to get the old version of WordPress.

Answer 3

So I ended up finding a bit of a workaround that works as a solution for this:

1. Dump the existing database and download the .sql file
2. Create an entirely new Wordpress installation on your host - go through all the steps including creating a database (Let's call it Database A)
3. Create a new, empty database (Let's call it Database B) in addition to the one created for your new WP install - this is critical, because of the differences in versions, you cannot simply upload the existing .sql data into the new version database
4. Import your existing data into Database B
5. By default, your WP-Config will be pointed at Database A, modify it to be pointing at Database B
6. Goto your site's admin (example.com/wp-admin) and login - you will be presented with the ability to upgrade your database to the current version structure

Voila!