Update WordPress manually – .com

In today’s tutorial we see how to update WordPress manually, in the event that we cannot, want or dare to do it from the control panel.

It is true that WordPress has a very nice, comfortable and practical system to update itself. We just have to go to “Desktop / Updates” and you will see a message similar to the one in the image.

In most cases we simply have to hit the magical blue button “Update now” and that’s it. The software will take care of everything, and will follow the next steps:

1. Activate maintenance mode
2. Download the latest version of WordPress
3. Update current installation
4. Deactivate maintenance mode

That’s fine, but on some occasions you won’t choose that path, but the manual way. Why? Well, it could be for various reasons, but the most typical are:

• We cannot do it automatically due to restrictions at the server level, and it turns out that the “Update now” button does not appear
• We don’t want to do it manually, because we like to have everything under control.
• We do not dare to do it automatically in case something fails during the process, or because we have a very old version and we do not know what can happen to us.

So, whether for one thing or another, if we want to take the manual path, we will have to do exactly the same steps as the automatic version.

Before everything, before anything…

But before taking action and starting to update anything, it is extremely important, recommended, healthy and coherent to do a backup of everything. When I say everything I mean both the records like the database.

That would already be enough for a separate tutorial, and I’m not going to extend it, but if you want to do it in an easy way I recommend the plugin for . And if you are interested in me doing a monographic tutorial on this subject, you just have to ask me and I will prepare it for you tomorrow.

With that being said, let’s move on…

Activate maintenance mode

Before doing anything, we are going to stop all activity on our website for a moment, since during the update process the website will be out of action for a few moments, and we do not want anyone to enter during that time, because nothing would work.

To activate maintenance mode there is nothing easier, simpler and faster than creating a file called .maintenance and place it at the root of the web via FTP. As simple as that, that will mean that if someone arrives they will see a message similar to this:

Since that’s not the height of usability, you want to make it prettier or customize it, instead of creating that file in .maintenanceyou can create the file maintenance.php and put it in the folder /wp-includes/. unlike file .maintenanceYou can customize that one all you want, to achieve things as artistic as this:

There are many plugins that perform a “maintenance page” function, but the vast majority stop working when WordPress is being updated, so I directly recommend the first option with .maintenancewhich is the safest and most reliable.

Download the latest version of WordPress

We can do it from the control panel itself, in “Updates”, by clicking on the “Download XX-es_ES” button, or in the .

Once we have downloaded it, we unzip the ZIP file that we will have received. If we have done it right, we will have a folder called “WordPress” with these files:

Of all those files, we are going to delete wp-config-sample.phpso it’s useless. It is used only for manual WordPress installations, but not for updates.

If you want to know how, take a look at the .

Next we will delete the directory /wp-content/. In this directory all the plugins, themes, languages ​​and files of our website are stored. In other words, under no circumstances will we be interested in overwriting the content of our website with an empty folder, since we would lose all our content.

And precisely to avoid misfortunes of this style, I always advise changing the location of the folder /wp-content/uploads/. I tell it in more detail in the tutorial.

Once we have deleted that file and folder, we can upload all the files via FTP.

Update WordPress

The operation is very simple. You only have to use any FTP program, enter your server, and upload all the files and directories that you have inside the folder /wordpress/ to your root folder.

Important: Do not upload the /wordpress/ folder. Just your content.

If you have done it correctly, your FTP program will notify you that these files already exist, and will ask you if you want to overwrite them. This message will depend on each FTP program, but it is usually something similar to this:

In any case, we will have to say yes, go ahead, do it. And then, and depending on the speed of the Internet that we have, we will have to take it easy, and if it is necessary to go for a drink, then we must wait for all the files to upload.

Once the process is complete, we must update the database. This is not always necessary, only in cases where the WordPress update has made changes to it. We can find out by visiting the following URL:

• http://example.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php

In this URL we will see a message with a button to update the database, or failing that, a message that will tell us that it is not necessary, because it is already updated.

And that’s it! Our WordPress already has both the files and the database updated to the latest version. A luxury, right? Ah, but let’s not forget about the last step…

Disable maintenance mode

Now that we have everything updated, we just have to deactivate the maintenance mode by deleting the file .maintenanceOr in her case maintenance.php.

Although you can also rename them so that they stop working but have them available in case you want to use them in the future.

conclusion

Updating WordPress manually is a bit of a slow and cumbersome process. This is precisely why updates from the control panel were invented. To make life easier for people.

But sometimes we want to do things manually for various reasons. If that is our case, no problem, we can do it, always with a backup copy that covers our backs, activating maintenance mode and with patience and tranquility.

The first time it is a “drop of cold sweat” process, especially if you are updating a website with which you make a living and bills with it. But the more times we do it, the more sure we will be of what we do to ourselves 🙂