For those of you who use WordPress for your blog you may want to consider upgrading your WordPress to the latest version if you haven’t already done so. I always find it a pain to upgrade to the latest version but I know it is important to do because of the new security features and possibly the new features that could be helpful. So without further delay here is how you upgrade to the latest version of WordPress!
- Download the new upgrade. You can download the upgrade by clicking here.
- Unzip the file and place it somewhere on your computer
- Backup your WordPress database. This is a VERY important step and if you skip it and wreak your blog this is your own fault.
- You can backup your WordPress database by going into the cpanel of where your website is hosted and there should be an option to backup the database to your computer.
- If the explanation above is not detailed enough you can click here to get a full guide on how to backup your blog database.
- Once you have backed up your database I would backup all the files on your server just incase you made changes to your WordPress templates or anything of that nature.
- To backup these files all you need to do is use an FTP program such as CuteFTP to download the files to your computer.
- Disable all of your blog plugins before making any changes. Not doing this could possibly cause problems with the upgrade process.
- Delete your old wp-includes and wp-admin directories. (be careful to only delete these folders)
- Copy the new wp-includes and wp-admin folders from the upgrade download to your server.
- Copy all the files from the upgrade download to the server but do not overwrite the wp-content folder, wp-config.php file, .htaccess file, wp-images folder, robots.txt file! (doing so will overwrite your themes and other changes you’ve made to your blog.
- Compare the wp-config-sample.php file that comes with the upgrade download to the one you have on the server. If there are any lines that are different then copy the lines from the sample file to your current file and save and upload the file.
- Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin.
- It may require you to upgrade and if it does just click on the option to upgrade your database.
- Turn on your plugins one at a time and test your blog to make sure it works.
- Now if you have any caching plugins installed on your blog you want to delete the cache so your blog displays properly for visitors.
- Now you should be done if you did everything right!
If these steps don’t work for you you can get a full guide here. Good luck upgrading your blog and hopefully this little explanation will help you upgrade your blog easily and successfully!
Suggestions:
Use WP Database backup, that way you don’t need to worry about backing up your database ever again.
There is no need to delete the old wp-includes and wp-admin folders, you may as well just overwrite them – almost zero down time that way.
There is no reason why you can’t overwrite the wp-content folder and there is no wp-config.php, .htaccess file, wp-images folder or robots.txt file in the new version anyway so there is no need to worry about overwriting those.
The chances of any changes being necessary in the wp-config are extraordinarily remote. If someone is upgrading from a version which requires changes then I suspect the blog will break somewhere anyway as that must be one heck of an old version they were running before.
Upgrading is simple. Copy all files from the zip file to your server. Visit admin panel. Done. WordPress handles everything else. You seem to have made a simple procedure rather complicated.
Hey Ryan – Thanks for the comment.
I agree that bloggers should use WP Database backup plugin to automatically backup their database. I just haven’t got around to setting it up myself.
As for deleting the folders I guess you could just overwrite them and that would be quicker.
I would NEVER overwrite the wp-content folder though. I have customized my themes and templates so if I overwrote the folder everything would be lost. And yes there usually isn’t a robots.txt, .htaccess file, or wp-config.php file in the update.
I remember once there was a change to the wp-config.php file so I think it can’t hurt to check it.
Upgrading can definitely be simple if you know what you are doing. I just think it can be a hassle. That’s all.
Thanks again for the comment and I will make some changes to the way my blog is setup.
Overwriting the wp-content folder won’t wipe anything but the core files. Your themes, plugins etc. will still be there after overwriting.
The only time it would be a problem is if you changed code in one of the default themes or plugins, however that is kinda pointless as you could just create new ones to avoid that problem.
Thanks for the input Ryan. I don’t think I would chance it myself because sometimes I do edit the themes and plugins. It may be OK for others but the way I have done it by keeping that folder intact seems to work the best for myself.