How to upgrade self-hosted wordpress and installed plugins of live site to latest availalbe versions without facing any trouble?

It really depends from which version to which. From my experience with WP: It can go flawlessly; it can also turn out to be a terribly cumbersome work, depending on what plug-ins are running and what else has been done with the installation.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure there are extensive migration guides on the Wordpress site - reading through, and working with those should be your first order of business.

A few general points:

How should i take backup of all things?

Do a full backup of all the site's folders through FTP, and make a dump of all databases used (it's usually one database). You can use phpMyAdmin's "Export" function for that.

Should i take backup of database also?

Yes, definitely.

How to upgraded modified plugins without loosing functionality?

That is impossible to answer without knowing the plugins. It can range from "will work flawlessly" to "awful mess". Best ask the person who modified the plugins.

here is the list of plugins http://is.gd/b5j9h

metal-gear-solid 2010-03-29 16:05:18

@jitendra I don't know all of those plugins, nor do I know how they have been modified. This is something you will find out only by upgrading the blog, or by hiring a PHP programmer to take a look (who would probably look carefully at each plugin, fix obvious incompatibilities, and upgrade to 2.9, see whether everything works well and fix what doesn't.) Most plugins, I assume, have been updated in the meantime to work with 2.9 as well, so maybe it's best to re-download those plugins and re-apply the customizations. It really depends.

Pekka 2010-03-29 16:10:59

I had changed some things in Theme also , so is there any possibility to get something wrong with theme after CMS upgrading

metal-gear-solid 2010-03-29 16:15:25

@jitendra it is possible, but I'd say just make a copy and try it out. (You could install a 2nd copy of the blog elsewhere, or on your local machine, to test, anyway. You shouldn't do the update on the live site, if your client is not okay with the prospect of some serious downtime if something doesn't work.) That said, jumping from 2.7 to 2.9 isn't really that much of a big deal, so chances are most things work out fine.

Pekka 2010-03-29 16:17:14

for plugins which are not modified and if i press "Upgrade Automatically" , how can i assure pressing "Upgrade Automatically" will not create any problem for plugin and will run like it was running previously? and is there any cons to press and upgrade Wordpress directly using "Please update automatically" "http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/288/1816142363.png"

metal-gear-solid 2010-03-29 16:41:46

@jitendra if 2.7 to 2.9 is already covered by the automatic update, great. Definitely try that first. Still, make sure you have a full set of backups. Also, if it's a live, high-traffic site, I'd make a copy and try it with that.

Pekka 2010-03-29 16:43:43

Just want to reinforce Pekka's comment about trying on a copy first. I always have a test version of my site as well as a live version. I update the test version first, to check nothing breaks, then do the live version. Doing the test version first also helps in terms of a practice run, so I know exactly what to do on the live site and am not hunting around for missing info etc.

Kris C 2010-03-29 18:54:59

@Kris - thx for ur comments

metal-gear-solid 2010-03-30 02:06:34

@Pekka - Should we take database backup manually using phpmyadmin or and wordpress pluging can do this.?

metal-gear-solid 2010-03-30 02:08:52

I use phpmyadmin to take the database backup. And remember to test the restore too! No point having backups if you don't know that they work.

Kris C 2010-03-30 08:23:49

@jitendra I would use PHPMYAdmin. Make sure you import the dump into another database and compare the number of rows in each table. phpMyAdmin sometimes screws up the dump.

Pekka 2010-03-30 10:00:17

@Kris I overlooked that you already said the same thing, sorry :)

Pekka 2010-03-30 11:02:25

I like this approach.If i'm testing a wordpress migration/update etc.I'll do it on a staging domain (i.e. staging.example.com) if everything goes well then i'll use svn switch on the prod version.

Jamie 2010-03-30 08:46:07

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How to upgrade self-hosted wordpress and installed plugins of live site to latest availalbe versions without facing any trouble?

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