If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our overview of WordPress themes. It explains what WP themes are and how themes can save small business owners significant time and money.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to upgrade your themes in the dashboard.
Upgrading A WordPress Theme – Best Practices
Before updating your WordPress themes, we recommend going through the handy checklist below to ensure that no settings or customizations are lost and your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Website
Backing up your files and data before making any updates to your site is vital. This way, if something goes wrong, you can always restore things back to their former state.
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 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 are using, there may be a changelog file accompanying an update which provides an overview of any 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, you should update.
3. Test The 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 make sure that the new theme version doesn’t conflict with any existing plugins or settings 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 with 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 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 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 WordPress 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 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 official WordPress child theme page here:
As you will see below, the actual process of updating a WordPress theme is simple. The bit of this 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 many upgrade without going through some or all of the steps listed in the section above. As mentioned earlier, the above are “best practice” methods to help you avoid problems. Ultimately, it is solely your responsibility as a website owner to protect your online assets.
Upgrading Your Themes – Step-By-Step Tutorial
Updating your themes from your admin dashboard is simple.
Log into your WordPress administration area …
Depending on the theme(s) you have installed on your site, you may receive occasional notifications in your WordPress Dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating a WordPress theme in the dashboard is very simple and easy. You can update your themes from the “Themes” page, or the “Updates” screen.
Updating WordPress Themes From The “Themes” Screen
You can see which themes require updating by going to your Themes area.
Select Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard menu …
This brings you to the “Themes” screen …
Themes that need updating display an “Update Available” message over their thumbnail image …
Locate the theme you want to update and click on the “Update Available” alert.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress automatically updates the theme …
Your WordPress theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the above process to update all of your outdated themes, or use the method below to bulk upgrade multiple themes at once.
Updating WordPress Themes Using The “Updates” Area
Update your WordPress theme using the “Updates” page as shown below:
To view all themes 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 update process …
WordPress automatically updates all of your selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to update your WordPress themes from your admin dashboard.
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