I’ve been tossing around the idea of writing a post explaining how to install/update WordPress via Fantastico for awhile now. While Fantastico is extremely easy to use, learning the process can take a little while. Now that most web hosts have CPanel and Fantastico available to their users, most people should have access to what is basically a two-click install.

If you’ve been wondering how to do this, today Easy WordPress published a post explaining how to upgrade WordPress via Fantastico. The post goes into great detail and includes screen shots, so you shouldn’t run into any problems. Gobala is also offering support for people still learning the installing process and provides some situation where you wouldn’t want to use Fantastico to update your software.

One problem not covered in the post is that Fantastico often takes way to long to be updated. If you find this is the case, you may want to look into using either WordPress Automatic Upgrade (which I often use), or the Instant Upgrade plugin. These plugins can be used immediately upon a new WordPress software release.

If you prefer to upgrade manually, I recommend you check out this upgrading WordPress guide on WordPress Max.

With the recent release of WordPress 2.3, the WordPress team took a popular and much needed WordPress feature known as tagging and integrated it directly into the software itself.  This is one of a few recent examples where WordPress has actually built popular existing plugins directly into their software. 

To me, this is crucial to the growth of WordPress, as plugins are often bulky and can have a lot of extra code that is not needed.  This can cause a lot more resources to be used than would otherwise be required, as well as cause some security vulnerabilities.  In other words, the more plugins that are built directly into the software, the better off we will be as WordPress users. 

Another plugin that I think is a strong candidate for integration into the WordPress software is a fairly new plugin from Keith over at Techie Buzz called WordPress Automatic Upgrade.   WPAU is an incredible plugin that had been attempted on several occasions, but Keith was the first person to create a reliable way to automate the process for upgrading WordPress.  If you already tried the plugin and had problems, you may have been using an old version.  I have used the latest version on 3 different sites and it worked perfectly, so I recommend you give it another trying using the newest version of the plugin. 

In order to use this plugin, simply upload and activate it.   Once activated, you will see a new option under Manage called Automatic Upgrade.  The plugin walk you through all the steps needed to upgrade WordPress, including checking over your current installation, putting your blog into maintenance mode, and even grabbing the latest version of WordPress from the official download page.

If you have a standard WordPress installation, I highly recommend using this plugin to keep your WordPress software up to date.   As has been previously documented all over the blogosphere, it can be a significant security risk to use an outdated version of WordPress.