Upgrading to WordPress 2.8.5 – API Errors
Yesterday I saw in my dashboard that WordPress 2.8.5 is available for download. So without blinking, I immediately upgraded my installation.
Thing is, I did this from work, where we have (lately) a poor internet connection and where we connect through special proxies. Whatever – this shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Well, for me it was. See I am using Firefox and we all know what Firefox does if a site takes too long to respond – yep, it quits with an error saying something like “The website is taking too long to respond”
Because I was on a slow internet connection, upgrading took quite a while, so Firefox didn’t like it – it quit loading the page. While I was a bit worried at that time, I went straight to the admin dashboard only to be realeased seeing I was now using the latest version of WordPress (2.8.5). So I thought I was OK.
Thursday brings trouble
This morning I saw a plugin I was using had a new version available, so I went ahead to update.
Then it hit me:
“Whatever” I said – I know how crappy my connection is, so I went to the dashboard thinking of updating later from home. Surprise! I received the same error!
I also use Google Analyticator for my stats, and I have it set to show up in the dashboard. When I hit “Try again”, the dashboard loaded, but GA was dead.
Despair
Everywhere I went in my admin, once in two times I received the above error. I started thinking this could be the result of Firefox quitting on me while I was updating, so I started a manual process of updating WordPress. Here’s how to do it in case (hope not) you have this same problem:
WordPress Manual Install
1. Back-up your database
If you have WP DB-Backup installed, trying a couple of times will get it working and you can back up everything.
If you’re not using this plugin (why on Earth?), you can read WPBeginner’s wonderful post on how to back-up your database manually.
2. Download the latest WordPress release (currently 2.8.5),
3. Delete old WordPress files
Go to your WordPress installation (through FTP) and delete wp-admin and wp-includes folders. Leave everything else in place for now and don’t bother checking your site or dashboard – they’re throwing errors now.
4. Upload the new files
Upload the wp-admin and wp-includes folders you just extracted from the archive.
Now you can safely go to the dashboard and reactivate all the plugins you were using.
Done. Your site is back in business 
Note: some WordPress releases add changes to the wp-config.php file. These are stated in the changelog. If the version you’re upgrading to has amends to this file, it’s best to just copy/paste your current settings into the new one, and overwrite the wp-config.php on your server.
Did you experience any issues while/after upgrading to WordPress 2.8.5 ? Better yet, did you even upgrade? 
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