Want to upgrade your WordPress to a newer version? Is there any message at the top of your dashboard telling you to upgrade your WordPress to the newer version, so that you can enjoy the new functionality or a more security fix?
You can upgrade your WordPress to a newer version using two methods. One is ‘Automatic Upgrade’ and the other one is ‘Manual Upgrade’. Lets see the steps involved in both the upgrades. Before that, make sure to take a backup of your blog completely. If anything goes wrong, your backup will be there safely.
Automatic Upgrade
Here the upgradation process is fairly straightforward and simple. Click on the message at the top of your dashboard or by going to the ‘Tools’ page, click on the ‘Upgrade’ menu.
Once you are on the ‘Update WordPress’ page, click on the ‘Update Automatically’ button to start upgrading. Once the process is finished, you will be up-to-date.
Manual Upgrade
95% of the blogs works with Automatic Upgrade. But for others, Manual Upgrade will be best. In may case, I do upgrade manually as it suits best for my blog.
1. Take a complete backup of your blog (including files and database).
2. Login to your WordPress admin panel, deactivate all active plugins.
3. Download the latest WordPresss to your computer and extract to a folder.
4. Connect to your ftp and go to your main directory, where WordPress files are stored. Now delete everything except the files wp-config, .htcacess and the folder wp-content. ie. you have wp-config, .htcacess and the folder wp-content in your FTP.
5. Now take the new wordpress folder ( to which you have extracted the new files), delete the folder wp-content and upload to the ftp. It may take about 10 minutes. Wait for the process to get finished. The files upgradation is finished. We have to upgrade the database now.
6. The wordpress admin may give a slight tweak to your database. So you have to upgrade your database. Login to your WordPress admin panel, click on ‘Upgrade WordPress Database‘. It will upgrade database automatically.
Your update is complete now. You can enable your Plugins again. If you have any issues with logging in, clear the cookies in your browser.
Very useful advice which I should not ignore.
Nice information. Thanks a lot for sharing this