Do you want to update your WordPress site?
It is essential to update your site either plugins, content and WordPress if their is an updates available. Beginners does not even understand what WordPress update are and some that understand are afraid of taking the step because it might break their site.
It is essential or compulsory to update your WordPress site because of security and for that we will show you how to update your website like a professional without breaking your website.
Below is an image of how WPress beginner updates their website when their is an updates
Reason why you need to Update your WordPress site
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There lots of reasons why you need to updates your WordPress site but one reason top all reasons and it is;
- You need to update to make sure that your website has the latest security patches, newest features, and the best speed and performance.
- Another is vulnerability in a plugin becomes common knowledge pretty fast because it’s an open-source ecosystem. If hackers can exploit the vulnerability before a patch is released, anyone who installed the plugin is at risk.
What you need to do before Updating your WordPress Site
Normally anything you want to do on your WordPress site, you must backup your website to avoid bug or breakage from the latest update to your website. Even if it is plugins update, you need to backup your website. This backup includes;
- Your WordPress database
- All your images and media uploads
- Your WordPress plugins and themes
- Core WordPress files
After you have successfully backup your website, you can contact your hosting to know how to backup your website, then you are good to go.
Watch Video on How to Safely Update WordPress
To make it easy, we have created a video tutorial on How to Safely Update WordPress.
Steps updating your WordPress site to latest version
Updating using the WordPress inbuilt update
There is nothing much to do, you can update using this method automatically.
Go to Dashboard » Updates page.
You will see the notice that a new version of WordPress is available. Now you just need to click on the ‘Update Now’ button to initiate the update.
WordPress will now fetch the latest version of the software and install it for you.
You will see the update progress on your screen. During the upgrade, WordPress will put your site in maintenance mode.
Updating using install plugins tools
Some times you might have updated version of your plugins on your computer as zip file and you need to update, then you need to install using installing plugins tools. You can read our guide on how to install WordPress plugins and update to the current plugins or wordpress.
Updating WordPress using FTP
You need to be careful doing this, so as to not break your website. I advice you to backup your website before doing this.
- You need to download the latest version of WordPress, just go to the WordPress download page and click on the Download button.
- Extract the zip file.
- Inside you will see a wordpress folder, this folder contains all the WordPress files you need for the update.
- Open your FTP client and connect to your website.
- Once connected, go to the wordpress folder you just extracted from the zip file in the local files column.
- In the remote files column, go to your website’s root folder. This folder could be public_html or named after your website’s domain name.
- Inside this folder, you will see your WordPress files and folders.
- Select all files inside the WordPress folder on your computer and then right click to select Upload.
- Your FTP client will now start uploading WordPress files from your computer to your website.
- Your website already has older versions of the files with the same name.
- You will be asked, what do you want to do with those files.
- You need to select ‘Overwrite’ and check the box next to ‘Always use this action’.
- Once the upload is finished, you need to go to the admin area of your WordPress site.
- You will see a page mentioning that database update is required.
- Click on the ‘Update WordPress Database’ button to continue.
- You have successfully updated your WordPress website.
What to check after WordPress updates
You need to make sure that everything is working as expected, just visit your website in a new browser window and review Settings in the WordPress admin area.
But If you have issues on this, you can use our comment session or join our delegate on Facebook to solve any issues related to WordPress and subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.