WordPress upgrade almost broke my blog!
Phew! I felt I learnt a lesson today… to follow instructions!
I was upgrading this blog to WordPress 2.2, and halfway along my installation process, along came an unfriendly error message that went something like this!
Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 46080 bytes)
The main page of the blog was still up running, but I couldn’t access my back end. I couldn’t upgrade, I couldn’t add new posts… nothing! I thought that this was it!
Good thing I searched up the error message and found that it was not a serious issue, and I got into the WordPress forums, where someone else had the same issue a while ago.
Apparently, the upgrade script was trying to take up too much memory (beyond the default limit of 8MB), and it was because I hadn’t disabled my Plugins before my upgrade. You know the lazy me! 
So I had to log into the database backend (phpMyAdmin) to manually disable the Plugins, run the script, and then enable them again.
So now I see the reason why Matt and team tells us to disable the WordPress Plugins before we upgrade. You can be sure I’ll do that for my next upgrade, and also make sure I backup my database before I do any drastic changes to the installation.
Well, it always requires a lesson like this before someone learns, isn’t it?
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketing coach based in Singapore. He is passionate in helping individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:51 am
Visit Johnny
Ha ha
Lucky I always follow instruction. Backup, disable plug-in, copy files, and install. No problem so far when I am updating some of my blogs.
But will keep in mind about your mistakes. I tends to lazy sometimes too.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:18 am
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Johnny,
Hehe… Yeah it doesn’t pay to be lazy, especially when you are not a geek who knows the ins and outs of WordPress.
Anyway, I encountered a similar problem on another blog, and the funny thing is that on that blog, no plugins were installed! I was not upgrading - I was just uploading a photo and this same error message popped up!
I’ve found a workaround at Tech Receipes.com… but its not really recommended. (Your webhost will hate you for sucking up their resources!)
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Visit Steven Wong
Hello Kian Ann,
There is another easier way to upgrade your blog, use instant upgrade plugin that you can download here:
http://www.zirona.com/software/wordpress-instant-upgrade
I use it to upgrade my blog from v2.0.4 to v2.1.3 in less than 2 minutes.
Try it.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Steven! Will give it a go the next time I do my upgrade!
May 24th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Visit uncle sha
Alot of people having v2.2 problems upgrade
i havn’t upgraded myself
waiting for the minor issues to be fixed with the fix patch
May 24th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Sha,
Well then, I do hope the WordPress team comes up with their next version fast then!
May 25th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Visit Anthony
I had a similar “lock out” experience while upgrading to 2.2. As usual, I was being lazy and didn’t disable my plugins. When I attempted to hit the upgrade button, bam, everything went hay wire. Errors in functions php, referring me to line numbers that didn’t even exist. It was terrible. Turns out when you upgrade to 2.2 you should disable Kings Widget plug-ins. WP doesn’t like you to use some other Widget plug-in when it already has its own. =)
May 26th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Visit Star
Kian Ann,
Sorry to hear about the problems upgrading, it’s a tough but important lesson. LOL
Maybe this could have helped:
http://www.optiniche.com/blog/252/wordpress-upgrade-video-tutorial/
It’s what I used when it came time for me to upgrade.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Visit Max
I’m definitely going to deactivate plugins from now on after reading this post. I updated the other day, and didn’t deactivate. Now a few things in the admin panel won’t work. It’s not bad enough that it’s a problem since I don’t use the items not working, but I don’t want next time to end up being what happened to you. Thanks for posting this to remind us lazy folks to read the instructions…:)
May 26th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Visit Glenn Tan
Hey, don’t “kan chiong” (:nervous,dialect in S’pore),
Back to see hows stuff here Kian Ann, hope alls well.. Looking forward to catching up with you once again ya?..
Glenn Tan
http://www.myempoweringchime.com
May 26th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Visit Cody
I’m a bit lazy too, but fortunately, I’ve never run into problems upgrading, even when I forget to deactivate my plugins. I don’t usually forget, but I did when I upgraded to 2.2. Luckily, the upgrade went smoothly. Even so, your experience shows what can happen. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
May 27th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Visit Alex
Haha buffer overflow! Nice little lesson there.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Visit Upgraded Successfully To WordPress 2.2 - Enblogopedia
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May 29th, 2007 at 9:51 am
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[...] in the past, I’m familiar with the drill - back up database and my files, deactivate plugins (why is this important?), delete old files and upload new ones, then reactivate Akismet as fast as I can. No problem - [...]
May 31st, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Visit Josh
Kian Ann, thank you for sharing your experience. I did not know the instructions say to disable all plug-ins prior to upgrading.
Thanks for helping me avoid a panic-attack!
May 31st, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Josh,
No problem! That is what blogging and open source is about - sharing solutions!
June 1st, 2007 at 10:40 am
Visit Is WordPress 2.2 memory greedy or is it just me?
[...] that after upgrading to WordPress 2.2, I frequently get “memory exhausted” errors like the one I faced when I was upgrading - even for the blogs that I didn’t add any plugins, I got errors when I uploaded [...]
June 18th, 2007 at 2:51 am
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June 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Visit Savaitgalio biblioteka Nr. 1: WordPress 2.2 ir atnaujinimo problemos - WordPress Gidas
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June 26th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Visit Meredith
I had a related problem - I didn’t disable my plugins for the upgrade to WP 2.2, and one of the plugins was incompatible with 2.2, and it broke the whole site! I will definitely be disabling my plugins this time around.
June 26th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Meredith,
I guess it really doesn’t pay to be lazy
I was always wondering why the need to go thru the hassle, until that error popped out 
September 10th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Visit rama
i got problem too while i upgrading my wp to 2.2 version.i disable already all of plugin except askismet, could it be the trouble ?
September 10th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Rama, after a while I figured out that WordPress itself is already taking up the memory.
Try this. Add this line to your .htaccess file
php_value memory_limit 16M