If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our overview of WordPress themes. We’ve written a comprehensive article that explains what WP themes are and how using themes can be cost-effective and time-saving for small business website owners.
This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to upgrade your WordPress theme in the admin area.
Upgrading Themes – Best Practices
We recommend going through the “best practices” checklist below before going through the upgrade process, to ensure that no settings or customizations are lost and your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Website Fully
Backing up your files and data before making any changes to your site is vital. Whenever something doesn’t go as planned, you can always restore things back to their former settings.
If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. Learn 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 have installed, there may be some release notes included with an update listing new features, improvements, security fixes or important changes in the new version.
If the theme changes seem irrelevant or unimportant, you can skip the update. Otherwise, you should 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 an installed theme, track 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 with the same plugins and configuration settings 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 to see if other theme users have 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 WordPress themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Use Child Themes For Heavily Customized Themes
If you have made extensive changes to your existing 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”, all 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 use 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! The part of the updating process that takes the most time and effort to complete is the precautionary work involved prior to upgrading.
Some 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 “best practice” methods for ensuring problem-free upgrades. Ultimately, it is solely your responsibility as a website owner to protect your digital properties.
Updating WP Themes From The WP Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
Updating your WP theme from the WP dashboard is simple.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on which theme(s) are installed on your website, you may receive an occasional alert in your WP Dashboard that your theme(s) need updating …
Updating a WordPress theme in your WP dashboard is very simple and easy. You can update your WordPress theme from the “Themes” feature, or the “Updates” section.
Updating Your Themes Using The “Themes” Section
You can see which themes need to be updated by going to your Themes page.
Choose Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard menu …
This brings you to the “Themes” page …
WordPress Themes with new versions display an “Update Available” message over the theme’s 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 the theme in seconds …
Your theme is now updated …
Repeat the above process to update all of your out-of-date themes, or use the method below to update multiple themes at once.
Updating WordPress Themes From The “Updates” Area
Update your WordPress theme via the “Updates” page as shown below:
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 upgrade process …
WordPress will automatically update all of your selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to upgrade your theme from your dashboard.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group