When you run your WordPress site or even before you start you probably want to know how to update a WordPress website. Here are 3 ways to do exactly that:
What is covered:
First: Backup
Before you do anything, make sure you backup your WordPress website so you can revert to the current version of your website should something go wrong. With that said, here we go:
Automatic WordPress Update
This is currently the standard way you’ll receive updates of WordPress – you won’t notice it until it is done.
It’s good in that it ensures that most WordPress websites do get the important security updates, bad in that you won’t be able to do a manual backup before you run the update.
Therefore, it is very important to have a good backup service like Blogvault so you can restore a backup should something go wrong one day.
So if automatic updates are enabled, which they most likely are, you don’t have to do anything.
Update WordPress Manually Through the Admin Dashboard
So let’s see how to update WordPress manually:
The first thing you’ll see that indicates that a WordPress update is due is this notice on the top of the dashboard.
After you have made sure you have a current backup, click on Please update now or on Updates in the black menu bar on the left.
You’ll get to a page with an overview over all updates that are due. Click on Update to version xxx and the WordPress update will start. Make sure you don’t click anything until it’s finished.
During the update, you’ll see status updates. Again, don’t click or do anything and wait until it’s finished. This shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes depending on how quick your server is (usually it’s less than one minute).
Once finished, you’ll see a welcome screen that introduces all updates shipped with the new WordPress version. Now everything is up to date again and you can continue with work on your website.
If something went wrong, restore your most current WordPress backup, contact hosting support or your WordPress developer.
Through 3rd Party Web Apps
Some 3rd party services like Blogvault will allow you to do the WordPress update through their website. It’s a viable option, I personally usually prefer to do it in the admin area directly as it takes away one party that could cause an error.
