If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our overview of WordPress themes. This comprehensive article explains what WP themes are and how they can save business website owners significant time and money.
This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to easily upgrade your theme in your admin area.
Upgrading Themes – Best Practices Checklist
Before updating any WordPress themes, we recommend going through the “best practices” checklist below.
1. Make A Backup
Backing up your site before making any updates to your site is essential. 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 plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here:
2. Check The Theme Update Notes
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 accompanying an update listing new features, improvements, security 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 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 check if all plugins are working fine with the new theme before applying it to 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 name using the same configuration settings (e.g. plugins) and test new theme versions on your test site before applying it to your main website.
4. Search Online
Before updating your theme, it’s a good idea to 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 provide forums for paid WordPress themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Is Your WordPress Theme Customized? Use A Child Theme
If you have made extensive changes to your existing WordPress 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 customizations get preserved through the “child theme.”
If you plan to customize your theme files, then we recommend becoming familiar with the use of 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 very simple. The part of this 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 many 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 to help you avoid problems. Ultimately, it is solely your responsibility as a website owner to protect your digital properties.
Updating A Theme In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
Updating your WP themes in your admin dashboard is easy.
Log into your WordPress administration area …
Depending on what theme(s) you have installed on your site, you may receive an occasional notification in your WordPress Dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating WordPress themes from your WP dashboard is a very simple process. You can update your WordPress theme from the “Themes” section, or the “Updates” feature.
Updating Your Theme Using The “Themes” Area
You can see which themes need updating by going to your Themes area.
Choose Appearance > Themes from your WP dashboard menu …
This opens up the “Themes” screen …
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” notice.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress will automatically update the theme in seconds …
Your WordPress theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the above to update all of your out-of-date themes, or use the method below to bulk upgrade multiple themes at once.
Updating Your Site Themes From The “Updates” Screen
Update your theme via the “Updates” area as shown below:
To view all themes installed on your site that need 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 WordPress themes in the WP dashboard.
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