[wp-hackers] Mass upgrade question

[Scot Hacker]

> From: Aaron Brazell <abrazell at b5media.com>
>

> Our upgrade script does indeed invoke cURL to run the upgrade.php
> script. We can't expect our bloggers to do anything except freak out
> when they see the "Database requires upgrade" message. :) Most of the
> time, if a blog slips through it's no big deal. The blog will display
> publicly as expected. One of the recent upgrades (2.0 -> 2.1) did
> indeed break the Loop until upgrade though,

Yeah, I noticed that :) Based on that experience, I've built in a  
simple wget call to

wp-admin/upgrade.php?step=1&backto=

which seems to complete the job nicely. On reflection, it would be  
pretty lame to not have the script finish the  upgrade, so this is  
definitely the way to go.

> but most of the time that
> doesn't happen and the blog will continue to operate as normal. In
> fact, that's the only time it has ever happened in my recollection.
>
> As for the policy question - understand that in our case, we own 95%
> of the blogs with a few exceptions where blogger-owned blogs
> affiliate with us for business reasons. In those rare cases, it is
> understood contractually that we handle the tech including upgrades.
> So no, we don't allow people to opt in or opt out. It doesn't fit our
> philosophy as a company to have people doing different things.

Gotcha. I decided to slate all user blogs for automated update, but  
have sent a message to customers giving them the opportunity to opt  
out of the program. Won't run the script on production blogs until  
they've had a chance to opt out. I guess the biggest danger here is  
the rare user who has (probably unnecessarily) modified core files -  
that's where a system like this could really break things, forcing me  
to go to backups, etc.

Thanks,
Scot