WordPress 3.2.1. Update Problems – database error, missing upgrade file, php version

Tweet Seems my blog had been throwing up a blank page for a few days and after speaking with my hosting provider who couldn’t seem to figure out anything wrong on the server side I decided to manually upgrade to WordPress 3.2.1.

First error I kept getting was an “Error Establishing Database Connection”. Thanks to Youtube I found a really helpful video which quickly helped me solve this.

Everything seemed to be working fine on the front-end but I had problems accessing the back-end. Kept getting an error that an upgrade.php file was missing. Even after I found the file and uploaded it I kept getting a fatal error. Thankfully I found this post that helped me figure out that WordPress 3.2.1 required PHP version 5.2.4 or higher. Checking my cPanel showed that the PHP version was 5.2.17. (http://www.dasblinkenlichten.com/?p=566)

Ended up having to roll back to 3.2.0.

This post is for anyone who might run into the same problems I had.

Lesson learnt – check the PHP version requirements for new WordPress updates before doing anything.