Upgrading Alpha Versions

Several alpha versions have been released the past few days which include upgrade instructions. Generally, there are two ways to upgrade to higher version. The easiest would be to completely uninstall Custom Write Panel plugin, de-activate it, upload new package, and then re-activate the plugin. Complete uninstallation is performed by doing the following steps.

  1. Go to ‘Options’ > ‘Custom Write Panel’
  2. Type uninstall in the last textbox
  3. Click ‘Update Options’
  4. Deactivate the plugin from the ‘Plugins’ menu

The upgrade method above will delete previously created custom write panels.

Another way of upgrading will involve running some queries via phpMyAdmin (or similar tool) in WordPress database. This method will preserve all custom write panels created. One thing to note when upgrading by the latter method is you can’t skip the upgrade instruction between the old version and the new version. Say, you’re upgrading from version 1.0.0a7 to 1.0.0a10, you will download 1.0.0a10 package, upload it, then you will performed upgrade instruction (when provided) specified for version 1.0.0a8, 1.0.0a9, and 1.0.0a10.

Upgrade script could’ve been included but I’d rather not clutter the code with so many upgrade routines between alpha versions. A proper upgrade script will be supplied for official release to make upgrading smoother, which may only involve de-activating and re-activating the plugin.