If you are new to WordPress, make sure you read our overview of WordPress themes. It explains what WP themes are and how they can be cost-effective and time-saving for business website owners.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to easily update your WP theme in the admin area.
Upgrading Your WordPress Theme – Best Practices
Before updating any themes, we recommend going through the handy checklist below to make sure that your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Website Fully
Backing up your files and data 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 free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups 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, bug fixes or any other information pertaining to the new theme version.
If the theme changes seem irrelevant or unimportant, you can skip the update. Otherwise, you should upgrade.
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 the theme, track any bugs and check if the new theme version doesn’t conflict with any existing plugins or settings 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 name with the same plugins and configuration settings 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 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 paid 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 the parent theme. When you update the “parent theme”, your modifications 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 not complicated at all … a few simple clicks and you’re done! The step that takes the most time and effort to complete is the preparation involved prior to upgrading.
Some people don’t upgrade their themes regularly, while many upgrade without going through 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, as a website owner, it is your responsibility to protect your online properties.
Updating Your WordPress Theme – Tutorial
Upgrading your WP theme from your admin dashboard is easy.
Log into your WordPress administration area …
Depending on the theme(s) you have installed on your site, you may receive an occasional notification in your dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating WordPress themes in your dashboard is quite simple and easy. You can update your themes from the “Themes” feature, or the “Updates” area.
Updating WordPress Themes Via The “Themes” Section
You can see which themes need updating by going to your Themes page.
Select Appearance > Themes from your WP dashboard menu …
This opens up the “Themes” page …
Themes that need updating 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” message.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress will automatically update your theme …
Your WordPress theme is now updated …
Repeat the above to update all of your outdated themes, or use the method below to bulk update multiple themes.
Updating Your Site’s Theme Via The “Updates” Area
Update your themes via the “Updates” area 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 upgrade process …
WordPress will automatically update all of the selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to upgrade your themes in your dashboard.
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