If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our introduction to WordPress themes. It explains what WP themes are and how they can save business website owners significant time and money.
This tutorial will show you how to easily update a theme to its newest version inside your dashboard.
Upgrading Themes – Best Practices Checklist
We recommend going through the checklist below before attempting the upgrade process, to help minimize any problems affecting your site during the update process.
1. Back Up Your Site Fully
Backing up your files and data before making any updates to your site is essential. If something goes wrong, you can always restore.
If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here:
2. Check The Theme Update Notes
When WordPress upgrades its software to a new version, this can affect the functionality of certain themes. Depending on the theme you have installed, there may be a changelog file accompanying an update which provides an overview of new features, improvements, bug fixes or important information pertaining to the new theme version.
If the changes seem irrelevant or unimportant, you can skip the update. Otherwise, it’s best to update.
3. Test Your Theme
If you can, it’s a good idea to check the theme before installing it on your site.
Typically, web service providers will set up a test site where they can test the latest version of the theme, track any bugs and check if all plugins are working fine with the new theme before applying and activating it on a live site.
If you’re managing your own website, you can install a test WordPress site on a subdomain or a separate domain using the same configuration settings (e.g. plugins) and test new theme versions on your test site before applying it to your main site.
4. Search Online
Before updating your theme, it’s a good idea to search online and see if other theme users have reported any issues with the new theme version.
You can type the theme name and version into Google, and search the theme developer’s support forum (many developers provide forums for premium themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Is Your Theme Heavily Customized? Use A Child Theme
If you have made extensive changes to your existing theme files, updating your theme could result in your custom modifications being overwritten. To prevent losing your theme modifications, therefore, we recommend you learn how to create “child themes”.
A WordPress child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of the parent theme. When you update the “parent theme”, your modifications get preserved through the “child theme.”
If you plan to customize your theme files, then we recommend becoming familiar with using child themes, especially if you use a theme that gets regularly updated. You can learn more about child themes by searching online, or visit the official WordPress child theme page here:
As you will see below, the actual process of updating a WordPress theme is fairly easy. The bit of this process that takes the most time and effort to complete is the precautionary work involved prior to upgrading.
Many people don’t upgrade their WordPress themes regularly, while others upgrade without going through all of the steps listed in the section above. As mentioned earlier, the above are recommended “best practice” methods to help you avoid problems. Ultimately, as a website owner, it is solely your responsibility to protect your digital properties.
Upgrading WP Theme In Your Admin Dashboard – Tutorial
Updating your WordPress themes in the WP dashboard is simple.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on which theme(s) you have installed on your site, you may receive occasional alerts in your WP Dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating themes from the WP dashboard is a very simple process. You can update your WordPress theme using the “Themes” section, or the “Updates” area.
Updating WordPress Themes From The “Themes” Screen
You can see which themes need to be updated by going to your Themes area.
Choose Appearance > Themes in your WP dashboard menu …
This opens up the “Themes” page …
WordPress Themes that need updating display an “Update Available” message over the theme’s thumbnail image …
Locate the theme you want to update and click on the “Update Available” message.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress will automatically update the theme …
Your WordPress theme is now updated …
Repeat the above to update all of your remaining themes, or use the method described below to bulk upgrade multiple themes.
Updating Your Themes Using The “Updates” Page
Update your WordPress theme using the “Updates” screen as shown below:
To view all themes on your website that require updating, click on Dashboard > Updates …
This opens up the Updates screen. Scroll down to the Themes section …
Select all the themes you want to update and click on Update Themes to complete the upgrade process …
WordPress automatically updates all of your selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to update your themes from the WP dashboard.
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