Watch Out For Automatic Wordpress Updates

After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.x one of my favorite features has to be the automatic plugin updating. But today, one DEVTRENCH reader alerted me that a certain download wasn't working. Well, as it turns out, none of the downloads that use the wp-DownloadMonitor plugin were working. Seems like the new automatic upgrading system changes the way that plugins can be made and after doing the auto upgrade of this plugin it ERASES your old download files with no warning! Of course if you read the README file for wp-DownloadMonitor it says it all in there, but you don't exactly get that information when clicking on upgrade in the Wordpress interface.

From the README file:

= Upgrade instructions from v2.0.6 =

Due to the new wordpress update system, the upload directory can no longer be within the plugin folder; wordpress deletes it. Therefore the plugin directory is now the uploads folder in the wp-content folder. ENSURE YOU MOVE DOWNLOADS HERE BEFORE UPGRADING! The plugin will convert the urls to the new directory on activation.

This is stupid, and I was lucky, because I did a backup before upgrading to WP 2.5.1. And BTW, it does not convert the urls - I had to do that manually in the database.

So, I think I'll be a little more careful about using the automatic plugin updates from now on and be doing a backup first.