If you are new to WordPress, make sure to read our overview of WordPress themes. It explains what WordPress themes are and how using themes can save small business website owners significant time and money.
This tutorial will show you how to upgrade WordPress themes inside the admin area.
Upgrading WP Themes – Best Practices
We recommend going through the “best practices” checklist below before going through the upgrade process, to ensure that your upgrades go smoothly.
1. Back Up Your Site Fully
Backing up your site before making any changes to your site is vital. Whenever something doesn’t go as planned, you can always restore your web site or blog to its former settings.
If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here:
2. Check The Changelog
Changes made to the WordPress software can affect the functionality of certain themes. Depending on the theme you are using, there may be some release notes accompanying an update which provides an overview of any new features, improvements, bug fixes or important information pertaining to the new theme version.
If the theme changes seem irrelevant or unimportant, you can skip the update. Otherwise, it’s best to 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 verify that the new theme version doesn’t conflict with any existing plugins or settings before installing and activating it on 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 play with the 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 do a quick search online to see if other theme users have reported any serious problems with the new theme version.
You can enter the theme name and version into Google, and search the theme developer’s support forum (many developers offer this for premium WordPress themes, and even for some free plugins).
5. Use Child Themes For Heavily Customized WordPress Themes
If you have made extensive customizations 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 the parent theme. When you update the “parent theme”, your modifications 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 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 part of the upgrade process that takes the most time and effort to complete is the preparation 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 for ensuring problem-free upgrades. Ultimately, it is your responsibility as a website owner to protect your digital assets.
How To Upgrade A Theme In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
Updating your theme from your admin dashboard is simple.
Log into your WordPress admin area …
Depending on what theme(s) are installed on your site, you may receive occasional notifications in your WordPress Dashboard that new theme versions are available and require updating …
Updating themes in your dashboard is easy. You can update your site’s theme from the “Themes” area, or the “Updates” section.
Updating Your Theme Via The “Themes” Screen
To see which themes need updating, go to your Themes area.
Select Appearance > Themes in your WP dashboard menu …
This opens up the “Themes” screen …
WordPress Themes that need updating display an “Update Available” message over their thumbnail image …
Locate the theme that needs to be updated and click on the “Update Available” notice.
When the theme details window opens up, click on update now …
WordPress automatically updates the theme in seconds …
Your theme is now up-to-date …
Repeat the above process to update all of your outdated themes, or use the method below to upgrade multiple themes.
Updating Your Themes From The “Updates” Area
Update your themes via the “Updates” section as follows:
To view all themes in your website that need 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 update process …
WordPress automatically updates all of your selected themes …
Congratulations! Now you know how to update your theme from the WP dashboard.
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