This is a new installment of my The WordPress Process series, documenting my forced march from the comfort of Blogger to the uncharted territories of WordPress. Parts 1 & 2 are here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, and Part 6 is here.
As everyone knows, WordPress 3.0 was released this week. This morning, I upgraded my WordPress installation (which uses Woothemes’ excellent Canvas theme), easily and without a hitch. Here’s how I did it.
First, backup your blog. There are about a million ways to do this. Most ways are free and hard. So I went with not free and very easy: I paid $45.00 for Backup Buddy. Backup Buddy looks impressive, and more importantly, my pals over at WordPress Tavern really like it. I can confirm that installation and activation is a breeze and a full backup takes just a few minutes, even using the slower compatibility mode. Obviously, you never really know if a backup system works until you have to restore lost content, but Backup Buddy looks like a screaming bargain at $45.00. The installation, activation and backup process could not be any easier.
After that, upgrading was a simple as clicking the “Update Automatically” button on the WordPress Dashboard.
Wpveda has a good walk-through.
Note that the WordPress upgrade takes a little while. So don’t panic if the screen remains blank for a while. That is normal.
All in all, it took about a half hour to backup and upgrade my WordPress installation. So far, it works great.
Later I’ll cover the new features. I’ll also try to answer any questions you have about the process in the Comments.
Newsome.Org 
It's great to be careful and backup before doing a WP upgrade. My process is this:Back up filesBack up the database (there is a simple plugin that does this to save you using PHPMyAdmin)Disable all pluginsUpgrade WordPressRe-enable all pluginsOne thing many people forget to do is disable all the plugins before upgrading. In the past this has caused myself and others a lot of pain. WordPress won't automatically disable them before upgrading, something that should be easy to incorporate into WordPress. Forget to diable the plugins and the whole thing falls in a heap.Well now they have added this feature in WordPress 3.0.Also, all plugins (and themes too) can be upgraded with a single click now.Yay!