If you are new to WordPress, make sure you read our overview of WordPress themes. It explains what themes are and how using a theme can save small business owners significant time and money.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to update your themes inside your admin area.
Upgrading Themes – Best Practices
We recommend going through the “best practices” checklist below before attempting the upgrade process, to ensure that no theme settings or customizations are lost and your update goes smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Website Fully
Backing up your files and data before making any changes to your site is vital. This way, if things don’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 fully automate your backup process here:
2. Check The Changelog
When WordPress upgrades its software to a new version, this can affect the functionality of certain themes. Depending on the theme you are using, there may be some release notes included with an update listing any new features, improvements, security fixes or any other changes in the new 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 a theme, track any 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 set up a test WordPress site on a subdomain or a separate domain using the same plugins and configuration settings and play with the 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 do a quick search online and see if anyone has reported any serious problems 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 offer this for paid themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Use Child Themes For Heavily Customized Themes
If you have made extensive customizations to your existing theme files, updating your theme may 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 modifications are 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 simple. The bit of the upgrade process that takes the most time and effort to complete is the preparation involved prior to upgrading.
Many people don’t upgrade their WordPress themes regularly, while others upgrade without going through some or all of the steps listed in the section above. As mentioned earlier, the above are recommended “best practice” methods for ensuring problem-free upgrades. Ultimately, it is the website owner’s responsibility to protect their online properties.
Updating Your WordPress Theme – Step-By-Step Tutorial
Upgrading your WordPress theme from the WP dashboard is easy.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on which theme(s) are installed on your site, you may receive an occasional notification in your WP Dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating a WordPress theme from your dashboard is a very simple process. You can update your themes via the “Themes” area, or the “Updates” area.
Updating WordPress Themes From The “Themes” Page
To see which themes need to be updated, go to your Themes area.
Choose Appearance > Themes from your WP dashboard menu …
This opens up the “Themes” page …
Themes with new versions display an “Update Available” message over their 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 theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the process described above to update all of your remaining themes, or use the method described below to upgrade multiple themes at once.
Updating Your Site Themes Using The “Updates” Area
Update your WordPress themes using the “Updates” area as shown below:
To view all themes in your website that need updating, click on Dashboard > Updates …
This brings up the Updates screen. Scroll down to the Themes section …
Check the box next to 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 in your dashboard.
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