If you are new to WordPress, make sure you read our overview of WordPress themes. The detailed article explains what WP themes are and how themes can save small business website owners significant time and money.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to easily upgrade your WordPress theme inside your dashboard.
Upgrading Your WordPress Theme – Best Practices
Before updating your WordPress themes, we recommend going through the “best practices” checklist below to ensure that your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Everything
Backing up your website before making any changes to your site is essential. Whenever something doesn’t go as planned, you can always restore.
If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here:
2. Check The Changelog
Changes made to the WordPress software can affect the functionality of certain themes. Depending on the theme you have installed, there may be a changelog file included with an update listing new features, improvements, security fixes or any other information pertaining to the new theme version.
If the changes seem irrelevant or unimportant, you can skip the update. Otherwise, it’s best to upgrade.
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 bugs and verify that 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 live site.
4. Search Online
Before updating your theme, it’s a good idea to do a quick search online and see if anyone has 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. Use Child Themes For Heavily Customized WordPress Themes
If you have made extensive changes to your existing WordPress theme files, upgrading 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 that parent theme. When you update the “parent theme”, your customizations 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 plan on using a theme that gets regularly updated. You can learn more about child themes by searching online, or visit the WordPress Codex child theme page here:
As you will see below, the actual process of updating a WordPress theme is not complicated at all … a few simple clicks and you’re done! What can feel slightly bothersome is the preparation involved prior to upgrading.
Some people don’t upgrade their 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, it is the website owner’s responsibility to protect their digital assets.
How To Upgrade Your WordPress Themes – Tutorial
Upgrading your WP themes in your admin dashboard is easy.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on the theme(s) you have installed on your website, you may receive occasional alerts in your dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating a WordPress theme in your dashboard is simple and easy. You can update your themes using the “Themes” feature, or the “Updates” area.
Updating WordPress Themes Using The “Themes” Area
You can see which themes need to be updated by going to your Themes area.
Choose Appearance > Themes in your WordPress admin menu …
This brings you to the “Themes” screen …
Themes that need updating display an “Update Available” message over their thumbnail image …
Locate the theme that needs to be updated and click on the “Update Available” alert.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress will automatically update your theme in seconds …
Your theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the above to update all of your remaining themes, or use the method described below to update multiple themes at once.
Updating Your Theme Via The “Updates” Section
Update your themes via the “Updates” section as follows:
To view all themes on your site 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 bulk update process …
WordPress automatically updates all of your selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to upgrade your theme from your admin dashboard.
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