WordPress 2.5 was released last month. Why can’t we upgrade using Fantastico? It turns out BlueHost has started their own Fanastico competitor called SimpleScripts. I doubt we’ll be seeing any new Fantastico updates. While Fantastico has had WordPress 2.5 scripts for at least three weeks, BlueHost’s tech support claims they are waiting on Fantastico to release updated scripts. This is the first problem.

The second problem is the recommended migration procedure here and here. It involves FTP clients and pulling database configuration bits from php files. This does not leave a good first impression of a product that is supposed to provide one-click installation and upgrades.

I ended up using the Wordpress Automatic Upgrader Plugin. I still needed to use an FTP client to install the plugin but now I am not dependent on Fanastico or SimpleScripts. This plugin downloads the latest files directly from WordPress so updates should be available as soon as WordPress releases them. I encountered two problems while upgrading to 2.5:

• The plugin created backups but provided the wrong link to download them. I had to use the FTP client to download them manually. I believe this is because I have installed WordPress into a wordpress\ subfolder rather than into the root.
• The plugin did not reactivate my plugins. I had to reactivate them manually.

On the positive side, SimpleScripts appears to be a more polished product compared to Fantastico.