How To Upgrade and Update WordPress A Simple Guide

So we have another WordPress Release 2.2.2 in such a short time, I’ve helped a few of my friends to set up WordPress blogs. They still aren’t very confident when upgrading or updating WordPress. I usually update as soon as the WordPress developers release a security fix. While there are Plugins that you can use to automatically download and update WordPress, but I prefer the manual route.

A list of Plugins that you can use to upgrade automatically.

1. The InstantUpgrade
2. WordPress Automatic Update

Here’s the simplest and safest manual route.

Backup your Database

The First rule, backup your WordPress Database even if you are using Automatic Update Plugins I recommend you to make a backup. If you find backing up the databases using phpMyAdmin too complicated a simpler solution is to install the excellent WordPress Database Plugin, not only can you download a copy of you database with a click you can also schedule it to send you a copy of the database by mail depending on the time frame you specify i.e. daily, weekly or monthly.

Download WordPress from WordPress.org

Always download the latest WordPress from the WordPress.org site. After you’ve download the zip file extract it to a folder (by default it extracts to a folder called WordPress). Login to your website using FTP and upload this folder to the root directory of your Website where your blog is installed (I assume that there is no other folder with the same name). Create a new folder called backup.

Important Note: Before we begin there are some files and folders you shouldn’t touch these are the wp-content folder and wp-config.php and .htaccess files in your root directory. Additionally you may have some non-WordPress related files like robots.txt, Sitemap.xml etc.

If you followed my instructions carefully You’ll see the following directory structure given in the screenshot below.

Move the folders called wp-admin and wp-includes from the root folder to the backup folder. Don’t do anything to the wp-content folder since this contains your themes and plugins and uploaded files. Also move all the WordPress related files from the root directory except wp-config.php and .htaccess (don’t move Non-WordPress related files that you may have example robots.txt, Sitemap.xml etc) Now the directory structure looks like this.

Next move all the folders wp-admin and wp-includes and files except the wp-content folder from your WordPress to the root folder.

Now go to your browser and type in www.your-blog-url.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php thats it your done.

Check if everything is running fine. You can delete the WordPress and backup folder if all is well.