Ok, I know, I should have done the intermittent upgrades, but I didn't. I plan to upgrade manually so that if something is amiss I can go back to 3.7.3 until I figure out what to do.

I see in another post that it might be better to do the upgrades in stages ( http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=21394 ) - that was 2.6 to 3.7.13, although some versions were skipped, including 3.7.3.

Do I also need to do this process going from 3.7.3 to 3.7.15 in steps, rather than going directly from 3.7.3 to 3.7.15?

Once I get it up-to-date I plan to put my header images, logo and favicon in the new image location as per Juggledad's instructions (in http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=8520).

I am also curious about Juggledad's new note at the top:

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As of 3.7.12 I recommend putting the header images. Logo and Favicon in an external file - using the new 'Image Locations' option - and then doing automatic upgrades (after doing a backup of course).
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it seems to contradict what is said in step 1 of the instructions, and I'm wondering why the change.

Anyway, as always, thanks for any help you can give! And now that I have a bit more confidence about updates I'll keep up with them!

A question first... I your current version of Atahualpa in a folder called atahualpa or is it in a folder called atahualpa373 or something of that sort?

Just the plain default "atahualpa", as it was an automatic install rather than a manual one. And in case you need to know, I just upgraded the site to Wordpress 3.9, and updated all the plugins.

I am also curious about Juggledad's new note at the top:

=========================
As of 3.7.12 I recommend putting the header images. Logo and Favicon in an external file - using the new 'Image Locations' option - and then doing automatic upgrades (after doing a backup of course).
=========================

it seems to contradict what is said in step 1 of the instructions, and I'm wondering why the change.

The reason for the change is a change in WordPress rules. It use o be that you could not have any file/image used by a theme outside the theme folder. And that ment each time the theme was updated your images were wiped out unless you manually upgraded. Now they are allowing themes to access images that are not stored in the theme folder, so we added code to allow you to put your images outside the theme folder to survive automatic upgrades. Since the automatic upgrades are easier, that is what I now recommend…once you have moved your images to the external folder.

Thanks Juggledad, I suspected that was the reasoning, but wanted to make sure it wasn't something else that I wasn't understanding.

once you upgrade go to the following theme options and hit the SAVE button
Style & edit HEADER AREA
Style & edit CENTER COLUMN
Style & edit FOOTER

Thanks. So you think I can safely (?) upgrade directly from 3.7.3 to 3.7.15?

Do a backup of your database and then give it a try. That way you can restore the db if something goes wrong

Clarification please, or maybe I just need to learn a little more about the inner workings of Wordpress and/or Atahualpa. If I want to be able to switch between an older version of Atahualpa and an upgraded version, would I have to revert to the database backup each time I "downgraded"? Not that I want to be doing that, but I just would like to understand it a little better in case.

I know that when I switch from a default theme to ata I don't have to, but I'm guessing that's because their settings are stored in different tables within the same db, whereas different versions of ata would be using the same database tables? So in an upgrade the table definitions may have been changed so that reversing an upgrade may require a db restore? Or, do different versions of ata somehow store their data in different tables?

Is there some documentation as to what upgrades created a database change that would make the database incompatible with an older version of the theme files? Does the changelog tell me?

So, I guess ultimately the question is, under what conditions would I have to restore the database?

Can you tell I'm afraid of having to restore the database?

Can you tell I'm afraid of having to restore the database?

If you are afraid of doing a restore, you should setup a play site and experiment. You are doing regular backups of youe database and your files…right???

You can install two versions of a theme - the name of the theme folder MUST be different. Realize that updates to themes generally mean that something has changed. Some times this might be just a bug fix but other times it could be a new feature, so while you can go from an older release to a newer one, you can't always go backwards.

In the case of going from 3.7.3, to 3.7.15, there are new options that have been added and if you try to go back to 3.7.3 there may be some errors because 3.7.3 doesn't know how to handle the new options that are now stored in the database. - hence doing a database backup before installing ANY upgrade, so if something doesn't work, you can go back to the point in thime where things did work.