WordPress 2.8 was launched a few days ago, and since then a lot of upgrades have gone wrong and a lot of people want to downgrade to the previous version, 2.7.1. I’ve written about this in my personal blog, but unless you are a geek there are bits and pieces that might not make much sense and that needs a bit of explaining.

So here is, what we hope, some instructions that will be a bit easier to follow.

First of all, what you need to downgrade your WordPress blog if it is self-hosted. In other words, if your WordPress installation is not on WordPress.com, but on a server account that you have access to.

You will need:

The login information to the FTP account.
Access to the database (more about that below).
An FTP client (an application, links to free FTP clients are below).
All the files to the WordPress installation you want to downgrade your blog to.

Lets take a closer look at what all this is. If you already know, you can skip this step.
Otherwise, keep reading.

FTP account:
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a way of uploading the necessary files that any web site or blog was made of. A lot of web hosts today also have an additional File Manager in a more user friendly environment, which you usually can access on the web if you login to your hosting account. If you prefer to use that File Manager, that works just as well.
If you want to upload your files over FTP, there should be a login with a username and a password for this purpose. This should be in any welcome email from your web host if you have this access. Note that it is not always you get FTP access. It all depends on what kind of hosting account you have and what your web host offer.

Access to the database:
A database is where all the data in your blog is stored – posts, pages, comments, links, users…everything that is not in your WordPress installation when it’s brand new, lives in the database. And the database is located in a different place than the bit of WordPress that we will downgrade.
This is what is usually most valuable to any blogger. It’s the words in any diary, if you want to compare it with something.
You need any access to that database for the sake of making a back-up. Sometimes you can get this access without having to login to a different place. Most web hosts today have this access from the user interface on the server (cPanel or similar), and over there you should also have the possibility to do backups of the database.

If you cannot access the database from your interface at the web host, and have no knowledge how to access this information, I suggest you get in touch with your web host to find out how you can make this backup. Because every WordPress installation is different, a backup of your data is necessary. No one can predict how a downgrade of this kind will turn out.

As an alternative, you can Export your contents in your blog from the Dashboard in WordPress. This is not exactly the same as a backup of the database on the server, but if you have no other choice, it’s better than nothing. That kind of export will save your posts, pages, comments etc. in a file that you can download from the back of your blog and later import if something goes wrong. It will however not save information such as blacklists (spam plugins use blacklists and whitelists in some cases), logins if you have more than one user on the blog etc.

So the best thing is always to make sure that you have a copy of the database itself.

FTP clients:

This is a stand-alone application that is used to upload and download files to the web server. If you have access to a File Manager that you can upload more than one file at the time with, this application is not really necessary. Use it if you want to or have to.

There are a number of free FTP clients available, and I would say that it’s all about taste and what you are use to.
However, unless you want to buy or just download a trial, go with FileZilla below. It’s Open Source and free to use for everyone.

Filezilla – works with any computer, PC or Mac, Windows or Linux…doesn’t matter. Select your platform and download here.

Explore how the FTP client works and make sure you know the difference between the files you have on your desktop and those that are already on the server. You will be able to see both in your FTP client and it is important that you understand which one is which.

WordPress files:

I suggest that you downgrade to 2.7.1. The reason is simple. Changes were made to the structure in how the database is saving your posts and pages in version 2.7, which means that if you try to downgrade beyond 2.7, nothing might work at all. When you upgraded to 2.8, some changes were made to the structure of the database as well, the the difference is not bigger than what can be corrected when you reinstall 2.7.1 again.

If you haven’t already downloaded WordPress 2.7.1, you can find them under the link under “Resources” in the sidebar here. It will take you straight to the version library at WordPress.org and you can download the files you need.
Download the .rar file since you will have to extract it on your computer before you begin to upload any files to the server.

And that’s about everything you need to do this.

Now the downgrade procedure itself.

First of all: Make sure you have that back-up of your data.

When that is done, these are the files you need to make sure stay as they are on the server:

wp-config.php: This holds the information that WordPress need to communicate with the database. Without this file, you won’t have a blog at all. So take good care of it.

The folder wp-content: This is where your theme files and plugins are located. This is also where pictures you upload when you create a post is stored. So unless you’ve made any changes and told WordPress to save your images elsewhere from the Settings, it will all be in the folder wp-content.

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No matter where on the server your WordPress blog is located, you can easily recognize it by finding the following folders:
wp-admin
wp-content
wp-includes

Except those folders there are also files outside them with file names starting with wp-, just like the names on the folders.

When you located these 3 folders you’re in the right place.
Your blog might be living inside another folder on the server, so unless it’s all in the “root” of the account, click around a bit. And with “root” I mean the first level of files and folders that you can see when you connected to the server. A lot of web servers look differently, but those folders will look the same everywhere.

If you are comfortable enough using FTP, you can easily upload more than one file to the server. And if you have to use a File Manager, you might have to upload the files one by one. In that case, and if you do have access to an FTP account, but are not sure how to use it, get in touch and I can give you a hand. Use the contact link at the top menu here and send me a line

Otherwise, lets make sure that your FTP client will transfer your files in the right way. An FTP client is transferring files differently depending on what kind of files it is.
An image is transferred in Binary Mode, while a text file, .php file etc. is transferred in ASCII. Some FTP clients can handle both these modes at the same time and decide for themselves what kind of file you are transferring. But I recommend that you set this manually. To transfer a file in the wrong mode will harm it and corrupt it.

Unzip the .rar file you’ve downloaded from WordPress.org and put the content in a folder that you can access easily.
Then find the files on your computer using the local view in the FTP client.

When you have the local view of the files from WordPress 2.7.1 that you’ve download, and the folders on the server that I mentioned above visible in the server view, you can begin to transfer the following folders from your computer to the server:

wp-admin
wp-includes

When the FTP client asks if you want to overwrite the folders/files, click “yes” or “ok” and let the transfer start.
The time this will take depends on your connection, but also on the server itself.

After that, upload all the wp-files.
There is no risk that you will overwrite wp-config.php since that file never exists in a new WordPress installation.
You can however leave the file wp-sample-config.php behind since it won’t be used anyway. We already have the only configuration file we will ever need.

When all the files and those 2 folders are uploaded, do this:

Go to your blog URL. If your blog still looks the same, do a refresh in the browser ( a Ctrl + F5 will completely refresh the browser view ).
What you should see is the login screen where it will ask you to login to the Dashboard as usual. After that you will be asked to upgrade the database. Just click OK and let it do the upgrade.

After this you should be back at your Dashboard again.
If the downgrade was successful, the reminder about upgrading to WordPress 2.8 will show at the top in the Dashboard as before.

You might need to go through your blog and make sure that plugins, widgets, links etc. are still activated and visible. My own blog disabled some widgets when I made this downgrade, my blogroll being one of them.

An important note about all this:
As I said earlier, every WordPress installation is different depending on a lot of things.
I cannot guarantee that this downgrade will work on your installation, but so far everyone who used these instructions have had a working blog afterwards.
If something would go terribly wrong and you followed the instructions exactly as it’s written above and your blog simply won’t work at all any more – send us a note.
If you don’t have a clue about how to use FTP or the File Manager…or feel that you can’t handle the procedures – send us a note.
Use the contact form above and I will get back to you.
You will still need the logins that I mentioned above if you want help with this.

Good luck.