I have numerous blogs running WordPress and with the latest release it stated I needed to be running PHP5.0 or better and my current dedicated server was running 4.99, or at least that’s what WordPress was telling me when trying to update. WordPress actually wouldn’t update until I had a newer version of PHP running.

So here is what I had to do to get the latest version of WordPress to self update to 3.2.1.

1. You need to update or add an htaccess file to the folder of your site (main root, not wordpress installation)
2. Using textedit/notepad create a blank file and add this to it or open your file “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” name the file “.htaccess”
3. upload this to the root folder of your site, it will also work for any subfolders within your site so you only have to upload it once.
4.  I used Transmit to upload but any FTP program will do, if you can’t see the file once you have created it (or can’t see this file to begin with as you might already have one on your server/folder) you will need to find the option “to show hidden files”. You will then be able to see the file.
5. go to your Admin in WordPress and try updating again, and it should work.

I found that after initially changing my htaccess file and updating wordpress I only got the homepage of my blog to work, all the other pages brought up an error. It seemed to clear itself after about five minutes and then all the links worked correctly.

You can find out more from 1and1 here.