Keeping Your WordPress Up to Date: A Step-by-Step Guide

It is important to update WordPress to the latest version, as it can improve your website with some new features, upgrades, and bug fixes. If you don’t update WordPress, your website will run less efficiently due to being out of date, and visitors will be less likely to explore it. It can also lead to a drop in traffic, which is not ideal in the long run.

a) Update your WordPress through your WordPress Admin dashboard  

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.

2. Next, check the homepage of your WordPress admin dashboard for new WordPress versions.

3. Then, click the “Update to version (latest version number)” button to initiate website updates.

4. Finally, a success message will be displayed along with plugin and theme update options.

b) Update your WordPress through File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Before you do this step, please backup your files and folders to avoid losing them. For more information about backups, you can check out the Backup informationpage.

1.Download the latest version of WordPress from the WordPress website and unzip the file.

2. After unzipping the file, delete the wp-config-sample.php file and wp-content folder to prevent losing any significant data.

3. Go to FileZilla website and download and install the latest FileZilla version on your computer device.

 4. Log in to your WordPress site by entering the hostname, port number, username, and password in FileZilla.

5. Find and right-click to delete the existing web host wp-includes and wp-admin directories on the right side of the FileZilla panel (remote site).

6. On the local site on the left side of the panel, find and open the downloaded, unzipped WordPress latest version file. Then, find and select the new wp-includes and wp-admin folders. After that, right-click and select “Upload” to upload the folder.

7. Upload the rest of the unzipped WordPress files from your computer to your web host directory. Overwrite old WordPress files by uploading new files to the server.

8. After all files have been uploaded, visit your site (yoursite.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php) to check if you have successfully completed the WordPress update of your site through File Transfer Protocol (FTP).