Local ports "up-to-date" version doesn't match website

[Walter Ian Kaye]

At 11:10 a -0800 05/11/2007, Beech Rintoul didst inscribe upon an 
electronic papyrus:

>Walter Ian Kaye wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>Locally I see this:
>>
>>/usr/ports/www/lynx-ssl> pkg_version -v
>>[...]
>>lynx-ssl-2.8.5_2                    =   up-to-date with port
>>
>>
>>But freebsd.org website shows 2.8.6_4,1
>>
>>How do I get my ports to know what's actually available?
>>
>>
>>thanks,
>>-Walter
>>running os version 4.10
>Freebsd 4.x is no longer supported in any way. Newer ports will not 
>build on 4.x. You should consider upgrading to 6.2.

Then why does the website info for lynx port list versions from 6.x 
down to 4.10? When I saw that, I figured it was supported....

I know 4.10 is EOL'd; it's just that it's a production Internet 
server and I don't know how long it'd be down for. I've never 
upgraded a FreeBSD system before and have no idea how to go about it 
(it's a remote dedicated server, unmanaged from my hosting provider). 
Will I have to reinstall every port afterwards, or can I upgrade the 
OS and the existing ports will just work?

thanks,
-Walter
still glad he talked his host (iStrata) into providing FreeBSD while 
their official offerings were only Linux. :-)