Between my own websites and those of my clients I manage about 12 blogs, all of which are running WordPress. Today I’ve been upgrading all of them to WordPress 2.8. I use the automatic upgrade process that WordPress provides because it makes upgrading quick and easy…at least for my clients who aren’t on Mediatemple’s servers. With my non-Mediatemple-hosted clients I merely click on the upgrade link, click on the button to upgrade automatically, and then their sites immediately start downloading the files and complete the upgrade and it all takes perhaps 20 seconds. On Mediatemple I have quite a different experience.
On Mediatemple when I click on the button to upgrade WordPress automatically it takes me to a screen where I have to input the FTP info. For some reason on my clients’ sites I only have to do this once and then it completely skips it every subsequent time. But the biggest difference with my clients’ sites is that the upgrades always work the first time, and quickly. On Mediatemple the process is much slower, and I get a lot of errors and sometimes the process fails entirely, forcing me to upgrade by downloading all the files and uploading them all to the site via FTP, which takes several minutes per website.
The errors I get are always of this nature:
Unpacking the core update
Could not copy file: /public_html/wp-content/upgrade/core/wordpress/wp-trackback.php
Installation Failed
But here’s the thing–it’s not always the same file, and I don’t always get the error. Sometimes the upgrade works the first time, no problems, even though it’s always slower than with those websites that aren’t on Mediatemple. Sometimes the upgrade fails the first time, giving me something like the above error, but then works the second time. Sometimes I get the error three, or four, or five times in a row, and then the next time the upgrade works just fine. Whenever I get the error multiple times in a row it’s always a different file that can’t be copied.
In addition, I frequently get errors saying the database connection has been lost.
Sometimes I’ll get the error several times and then the screen goes white and I can’t access the admin at all. At this point the only solution is to upload the files manually via FTP.
And so it seems at least part of the problem is one of connectivity or performance of the server. I know it’s not the particular configuration of the blogs or plugins because they’re all using the same plugins and configurations. It’s got to be something to do with the hosting. If I knew it was just a matter of performance I could upgrade the server, but I wonder if it may be some root level configuration on the server that makes the difference. Either way, if you’ve had the same issues and solved them let me know.
