Evelyn Grazini commented on upgrading WordPress with Fantastico yesterday, saying “One word of warning though for those who upgrade. DO NOT do it through Fantastico in your cpanel“.
Although it will probably be a couple of weeks before the new WordPress 2.5 release shows up in Fantastico, I'm more than happy to wait for it and do the installation from there. (I did a manual installation of the new version to another blog, so I still get to play with it in the meantime.)
I do however take a few precautions when doing the upgrade through cPanel and Fantastico, and have never had a problem. First, I make sure that the database has been backed-up and then revert to the default theme and de-activate all my plugins. Once the update has been installed, I change back to my current theme and re-activate the plugins one-by-one, making sure that each works as it should.
If the prospect of ending up with a ‘bunch of weird characters' (or worse) still has you worried, there are detailed instructions on the WordPress Codex about how to do a backup and upgrade your WordPress installation manually.
[tags]Wordpress, upgrade, Fantastico[/tags]