After upgrading several shops recently, I’ve been thinking about the upgrade process. Perhaps it should be central to the process of building an application. The ease of upgrading must help keep installed packages up to date, if its easier it seems much more likely to happen, if its automated even better.

To that end any tools that ease the upgrade process like wp-cli are great. I’m sure the ease of upgrade in WordPress must contribute mightily to their success in getting WordPress to its vast number of installs.

Even someone relatively motivated and informed when faced with an upgrade process that requires copying over a whole load of new files over old files feels deterred. I’m sure the effect is exaggerated in someone who doesn’t understand the error messages. Its also prone to error when you picking out different file paths /admin/theme/default/default/theme and /theme/default/default/theme. Even more frustrating if something that is supposed to have an upgrade process that then fails, as your trying to do the right thing and blows up in your face.

Its something I’m going to factor more strongly when choosing which packages to use for projects in the future.