If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our overview of WordPress themes. The detailed article explains what WP themes are and how using a theme can save web business owners significant time and money.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to easily upgrade your WP themes with just a few clicks inside the admin area.
Upgrading A WordPress Theme – Best Practices
We recommend going through the handy checklist below before attempting the upgrade process, to ensure that your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Site Files And Data
Backing up your site before making any changes to your site is vital. Whenever something doesn’t go as planned, you can always restore.
If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn 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 have installed, there may be a changelog file accompanying an update which provides an overview of new features, improvements, bug fixes or important information pertaining to the new version.
If the theme 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 any bugs and check to see if the new theme version doesn’t conflict with any existing plugins or settings before applying it to a live site.
If you manage your own website, you can set up 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 website.
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 premium WordPress themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Is Your Theme Heavily Customized? Use A Child Theme
If you have made extensive customizations to your existing 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 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 plan on using a theme that gets regularly updated. You can learn more about child themes by searching online, or just 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 bit of the updating process that takes the most time and effort to complete is the preparation involved prior to upgrading.
Many people don’t upgrade their 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 the website owner’s responsibility to protect their digital assets.
Upgrading Your Themes – Tutorial
Updating your themes in your admin dashboard is simple.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on which theme(s) you have installed on your website, you may receive occasional alerts in your WP Dashboard that your theme(s) need updating …
Updating a theme in the dashboard is very simple and easy. You can update your site’s theme from the “Themes” area, or the “Updates” screen.
Updating WordPress Themes Using The “Themes” Area
You can see which themes need updating by going to your Themes page.
Choose Appearance > Themes in your WP admin menu …
This brings you to the “Themes” screen …
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” message.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress automatically updates your theme in seconds …
Your WordPress theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the above process to update all of your out-of-date themes, or use the method described below to bulk update multiple themes at once.
Updating Your Themes From The “Updates” Page
Update your WordPress themes via the “Updates” area as shown below:
To view all themes installed in your site that require updating, click on Dashboard > Updates …
This brings 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 will automatically update all of the selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to update your WP themes from the WP dashboard.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum