WordPress:Upgrading WordPress

Before you get started, make sure you meet the minimum requirements.

Three Step Upgrade

These are the short instructions, if you want more check out the extended upgrade instructions. If you experience problems with the Three Step Upgrade, you may want to review the more detailed upgrade instructions.

For these instructions, it is assumed that your blog's URL is http://example.com/wordpress/. Note that during the upgrade process access to your blog may not work for your visitors. You may consider a plugin like Maintenance Mode.

Step 0: Before You Get Started

• Just in case something goes wrong, make sure you have a backup. WordPress:WordPress_Backups is a comprehensive guide.
• Deactivate your plugins. A plugin might not be compatible with the new version, so it's nice to check for new versions of them and deactivate any that may cause problems. You can reactivate plugins one-by-one after the upgrade.

Step 1: Replace WordPress files

1. Get the latest WordPress. Either download and extract it to your computer or download it directly to the server.
2. Copy the new files to your server, overwriting old files. You may use FTP or shell commands to do so.

NOTE   The wp-content folder requires special handling, as do the plugins and themes folders. You must copy over the contents of these folders, not the entire folder. Copying the entire folder overwrites all your customizations and added content.

Also take care to preserve the wp-config.php file in the root directory, as it contains your database sign-in information. Do note though that usually this will not be a problem since in a new installation the config file will be named wp-config-sample.php.

Step 2: Upgrade your installation

1. Visit the upgrade page. It will be at a URL like http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php. This updates your database to be compatible with the latest code, and before you do this your blog might look funny.

Step 3: Do something nice for yourself

If you have caching enabled, your changes will appear to users more immediately if you clear the cache at this point (and if you don't, you may get confused when you see the old version number in page footers when you check to see if the upgrade worked).

Your WordPress installation is successfully upgraded. That's as simple as we can make it without Updating WordPress Using Subversion.

Consider rewarding yourself with a blog post about the upgrade, reading that book or article you've been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and let the world pass you by.

Troubleshooting

If anything has gone wrong the first thing to do is go through all the steps in our extended upgrade instructions. That page also has information about some of the most common problems we see.