I wish I had knew about cPanel and Fantastico more than two years ago when I started using WordPress.
It’s the easiest way I’ve found to install and upgrade WordPress.
Literally, it takes seconds for both. To update all our theme demo sites at iThemes, it took me about 5 minutes total … just now.
Upgrading WordPress is something I get asked about regularly by clients, especially since later versions of WordPress include this message prominently in the Dashboard: “A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.”
When I started getting serious about my web ventures, I went with GoDaddy. I enjoyed the ease of use of their hosting software (except for how they do email!). Then I heard about cPanel — used by most all of the other popular web hosts — and now I wished I had started with it, simply for the convenience of cPanel/Fantastico.
OK, and I got to say it, “Fantastico is fantastic.” There, I feel better.
Doreo, Lunarpages and HostGator all use cPanel …. I’d recommend them all.
Fantastico is really great. The only downside is that it can sometimes take a bit until the updated packages are released. From what we hear this will be “fixed” in Fantastico 3.x as individual hosts will be able to create the upgraded software themselves.
Frank, thanks for this honest feedback! This is why I refer people to Doreo!
Has there been stories of Fantastico screwing up wp upgrades? Many do not use Fantastico as they do not trust it enough. An unfounded fear?
Pratheep, I’m going off my somewhat limited experience with it …. and I haven’t had a problem. I’d be interested in what Frank says as a web host.
If I had to pick between a beginning user doing manual upgrades (uploading files) and having Fantastico script do it, I’d pick the easier route.
As far as I can remember (and search through support tickets) Fantastico has not messed up any WordPress upgrades. Even if it did cause a problem it backs up the install and database before the upgrade (what a novel concept) so it would be easy to recover.
If people were having issues with Fantastico upgrade I’d put a small wager that it’s incompatible plug-ins or templates.
Well, I guess Fantastico’s not bad after all. Perhaps its really..fantastic..
Cory,
Did you have to configure Fantastico at all? I had my host (Hostdime) install it today and when I click on WordPress it says there is no current installations.
Mike, I’m going to update this post with a video showing you how easy it is/was for me.
My experience with cPanel and Fantastico is that it was already installed and ready to go and literally took about 3 clicks …. I just set my email, directory to be installed in and some basic stuff and clicked Install.
Fantastico is installed and managed by the web host and cPanel. So the user does not need to configure it. When I swithched hosting there were issues with the Fantastico as well. But that’s for the web host to solve.
Cory,
When I upgrade WordPress using Fantastico, I get the following message: “Click on Upgrade only if
– no files, languages, themes have been modified”.
Does a Fantastico upgrade affect the themes folder and, if so, in what way?
Secondly, I read somewhere that one should de-activate plugins before upgrading through Fantastico. Is that what one should do?
I find your blog really useful.
Francis
Francis,
Those are pretty much standard WordPress warnings. When you upgrade WP (via Fantastico or by hand) your going to overwrite the language files. So if you modified they, you’ll have to go back and do it again. The theme warning (I believe) is more on the order that newer versions of WP might change theme variables (or add new ones etc.) which could break older themes. The upgrades don’t affect your theme unless you are using the default installed ones.
It’s also a standard WP warning to deactivate your plugins (just read the doc on the WP site). Upgrades might break some plugins and that might break your blog.
Frank,
Thanks for such a quick and very useful response.
Francis