Best Practices To Update WordPress Safely

WordPress, as we all know, is the most valued ready-made Content Management Systems available at the present date that aids in developing timely and high-performing websites.

Undoubtedly, the CMS serves as an excellent platform to build various different kinds of websites/web apps efficiently and in no time but at the same time, it also demands you put your valuable time and endeavors in the maintenance of the sites. The regular maintenance of a WordPress website Plugins is extremely crucial to ensure a better performance and security of the sites.

Although there are different kinds of maintenance loads that need to be implemented on every WordPress website that includes updating the plugins, themes, the core WordPress utilized in a WordPress site, one of the important maintenance chores associated with WordPress websites is updating their WordPress version on a consistent basis.

Are you also the one who is utilizing this CMS for running your business website? Then it is highly crucial for you to employ its latest version in order to ensure an optimized security and performance of your WordPress website. Updating your WordPress version not only aids you to enhance the security of your website but it also allows you to incorporate the most advanced features offered by WordPress in your site.

However, many people are afraid of updating their WordPress versions as a single mistake committed while performing the task can break the entire site. Hence, we have brought this article for you so that you can easily figure out how you can update your WordPress without harming your website. We will begin in a moment meanwhile if you are not the one who has already adopted WordPress but planning to adopt it for your next website and looking to hire experienced WordPress developers to accomplish the task, you can meet our team anytime. Now, let us begin with the importance of updating your WordPress.

Significance Of Updating Your WordPress

We all are aware of the number of cyber-attacks occurring in current times. Has anyone thought ever why these numbers are rising at such a rapid rate? These numbers are rising due to the security loopholes present in websites/websites.

If we talk about WordPress then one of the major reasons behind the occurrence of these attacks is the outdated versions of WordPress, themes, and plugins utilized on the website. This is due to the fact that the WordPress team is constantly keeping an eye on security and other issues encountering with WordPress websites, fixing those issues, and releasing the updated version having all the fixes.

If you are missing to update your WordPress to the latest version, it means that you yourself are giving room to these issues in your site and diminishing the security of your site. Hence, to assure the best possible security for your website, updating your WordPress version to the latest one is highly crucial.

The second most important reason for constantly updating your WordPress is every WordPress release introduces new features and a number of other significant changes apart from bug fixes. Hence, if you are using the older version of WordPress then you may not feel the same WordPress experience that someone utilizing the latest version is experiencing. Also, you may find difficulty in getting online help for any WordPress related issues you encounter as most of the community use the latest versions only and as your version is not matching with them, they may not be able to help you.

How To Update Your WordPress

Basically, there are two ways of doing so. You can either do it manually or automatically. However, before getting started it is highly recommended to back up your entire site including the files and database as updating your WordPress directly affects all your WordPress files and any changes you made to these files may get lost during the update process. The backup aid you to get your site back to its previous state in case you lose anything by chance because of the updates performed.

Updating the WordPress automatically

Login to your WordPress dashboard. Go to the Updates page.

You can simply click on the ‘Update Now’ button. This will initiate the update process and install the updated version of WordPress for you.

Updating the WordPress manually

In case the first method is not working for you, you can also perform a manual update on your current WordPress version. This method requires the use of FTP.

Download the latest version of WordPress from the WordPress’ official site.

The browser will give you a zip file as a result. Extract it. You will get a ‘WordPress’ folder once you extract the files. The folder will be having all the files you require to perform the update.

Open your FTP client now and link with your website. Now upload all the files you got by extracting the folder to your WordPress hosting server. When you are done with uploading the files, it will show you a popup box asking what you want to do with the files. Select the overwrite option and click OK.

Note: Make sure to skip the wp-content folder while overriding the files as this folder contains the themes, plugins, and other important files associated with your website.

The Bottom Line

Updating your WordPress regularly is extremely important for ensuring better security and performance of your websites and skipping the same can cost you heavy in the long run. Hence, if you are struggling with any kind of fears or anxieties while performing WordPress updates then rather than running away from the updates, finding out the ways to settle fears and anxieties and take confident steps while performing updations is highly recommended.

Hope the above article will aid you to perform WordPress updates in a safe and secure manner. However, If you are still not so sure about this and need assistance, you can take help from our professional WordPress developers anytime!