Attention always make copies of the database and files before upgrading from one version to another.

I recently came across a tricky problem., namely, a client came with an old version of WordPress 2.1. To my surprise, I found everything 2 virus all over the site, despite the fact that he was not protected in any way yet with 2007 of the year. Since there were viruses, I decided to do a standard manual update of the system and start searching for viruses, and then several problems appeared at once:

1. Hosting did not support php older 5,3 version and that was beta.
2. The hosting had a limit on the files I uploaded via ftp. In my opinion, there is not only a site with 2007 year not updated, but also hosting is under update.
3. On this hosting, it was possible to download the database only by uploading your phpmyadmin to the root, since they have been buggy for a long time and could only see what was in the database, but exporting there was unrealistic.
4. WordPress versions 2,1 all data was stored in windows encoding 1251, and it was very sad when, when updating, all the text became question marks with diamonds.
5. WordPress had to update release after release, and there were more such releases 140. did not count all releases.

All of the above I decided. First registered normal hosting with whom I have been friends for a long time. Among other things, hosting also scanned the site for problems, since there is a built-in antivirus. Transferring the site to a normal hosting immediately crossed out the first 3 item.

Regarding the database encoding, the issue was resolved with the update of WordPress version by version. When did question marks begin to appear in the text during the update, the problem was solved quite simply, but to find this solution had to spend a lot of effort. При обновлении важно было от версии к версии перестраивать файл wp-config.php из старой версии в новую по образцу файла wp-config-simple.php который был в каждой новой версии.

Important Note When Upgrading Old Versions of WordPress. Fortunately, it turned out later that some releases could be skipped, e.g. updating a WordPress release 2,71 up to version 2,8 then to 2,81 and then you can immediately 2,86. I think you guessed that there was much less work from this, but I still had to tinker a lot. To understand how many times wordpress had to be updated manually, look list of releases to the latest version. By the way, you can take files from these releases for updating!

If you don't have time to spend 2-5 days for a quality CMS update, you can order it from me for a fee.

The cost is negotiated from site to site., approximate cost will be from 30 dollars. It all depends on the size of the site and how, how old is the version you have installed. Try it yourself, If it does not work out, then I am ready to help for a fee.

You may find the material useful manually updating WordPress