1 00:00:00,720 --> 00:00:05,760 In this video you'll learn about WordPress updates to the core files and why it's important to keep 2 00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:08,490 your site updated to the latest version. 3 00:00:08,490 --> 00:00:14,870 There are two levels of Wordpress core updates major feature releases and minor and security updates. 4 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:21,240 Both types of updates can be made to be completely automated or initiated by the administrator and they 5 00:00:21,240 --> 00:00:23,600 can even be automated by the hosting company. 6 00:00:23,790 --> 00:00:28,590 By the end of this lesson you'll have an understanding of how each type of update is referenced and 7 00:00:28,590 --> 00:00:34,610 how in some cases it's best to have WordPress automatically update itself as is the current builtin 8 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:36,510 functionality. 9 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:43,030 Let's start by just taking a look at what the Wordpress Codex says about updating WordPress. 10 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:48,270 I'm at Wordpress dot org and I just did a search up here at the right for updating WordPress. 11 00:00:48,380 --> 00:00:54,460 There's a page called updating Wordpress and it has a little bit of detail that you can read about even 12 00:00:54,460 --> 00:01:00,180 how to manually update Wordpress which these days isn't usually necessary. 13 00:01:00,190 --> 00:01:07,180 The main paragraph that we'll look at right here is the fact that automatic background updates are now 14 00:01:07,450 --> 00:01:09,600 in wordpress built in. 15 00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:16,660 Starting at versioned 3.7 you don't have to apply minor and security updates and they are set to actually 16 00:01:16,720 --> 00:01:19,930 automatically apply in the background. 17 00:01:20,730 --> 00:01:24,870 It's definitely a best practice to leave this set as is. 18 00:01:24,870 --> 00:01:31,410 So that WordPress will automatically apply minor and especially security updates. 19 00:01:31,410 --> 00:01:36,870 Now these are referred to with a third decimal place within the version numbers. 20 00:01:36,930 --> 00:01:45,270 So we have 3.7 comes out at a certain time 3.7 point one will be a security update that can be automatically 21 00:01:45,420 --> 00:01:50,280 activated just in the background as soon as Wordpress issues it. 22 00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:55,860 This is important because when they issue a security update they may have found a security hole and 23 00:01:55,860 --> 00:02:02,660 they want to patch that immediately so that the risk of your site being hacked or compromised is minimized. 24 00:02:03,890 --> 00:02:12,290 The next kind of update is called a major feature release and that would be to a new feature version 25 00:02:12,320 --> 00:02:15,350 inside of the version that's currently active. 26 00:02:15,350 --> 00:02:18,320 So right now we're in version 4 of wordpress. 27 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:26,490 We just upgraded from version four point five point three to four point six. 28 00:02:27,050 --> 00:02:30,410 And now 4.6 was a major feature release. 29 00:02:30,530 --> 00:02:39,180 It was put out to add a lot of different features to WordPress and it's not necessarily a security update. 30 00:02:39,290 --> 00:02:47,990 So these major feature releases do not automatically update but you can use one click instead of the 31 00:02:48,050 --> 00:02:53,950 updating area inside of the Wordpress dashboard to update your version. 32 00:02:54,180 --> 00:03:00,900 On the other hand some hosting companies provide automatic updates of the major feature release versions 33 00:03:00,900 --> 00:03:06,750 of Wordpress both site ground and flywheel offer this service. 34 00:03:06,750 --> 00:03:12,990 In fact flywheel has an upgrade schedule that's about two to three weeks beyond when the new version 35 00:03:12,990 --> 00:03:14,760 of Wordpress is released. 36 00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:20,430 They do this for a reason and that's just in case there are any errors or security issues that immediately 37 00:03:20,430 --> 00:03:21,380 get released. 38 00:03:21,450 --> 00:03:25,820 All the sites on flywheel are as secure as they possibly can be. 39 00:03:25,830 --> 00:03:31,970 So now in one of my sites wild food girl dotcom in my flywheel account is out of date. 40 00:03:31,980 --> 00:03:41,940 It's got the previous latest version four point 5.3 but the version 4.6 was the newest version released 41 00:03:42,180 --> 00:03:43,730 a couple of weeks ago. 42 00:03:44,160 --> 00:03:49,350 Now you can see down here in their message they're going to be automatically upgrading sites starting 43 00:03:49,350 --> 00:03:53,600 Friday September 2nd and that's about a week from now. 44 00:03:53,640 --> 00:04:00,300 But if I wanted to manually upgrade to 4.6 through my flywheel dashboard I could just click this button 45 00:04:00,390 --> 00:04:04,350 right here inside the see panel site ground. 46 00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:10,540 If you scroll down towards the bottom they have their special software and services section where they 47 00:04:10,540 --> 00:04:15,040 have a special W.P. auto update feature right here. 48 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:21,130 I just clicked it and it's loading the sites that I have and enabled it this domain and I can choose 49 00:04:21,130 --> 00:04:27,880 whether I want those to be automatically upgraded along with plug ins or if I don't want this activated 50 00:04:27,940 --> 00:04:28,740 at all. 51 00:04:28,870 --> 00:04:37,100 I could disable auto update right here if I want to now you probably have an old version of a WordPress 52 00:04:37,100 --> 00:04:42,890 site that we built earlier in this course and hopefully you could log into your Wordpress dashboard 53 00:04:43,250 --> 00:04:47,980 and see that older version and be able to make some updates. 54 00:04:47,990 --> 00:04:54,040 I've got our fire weed photography site open inside of my local development environment. 55 00:04:54,200 --> 00:04:57,270 So I do have map running like this. 56 00:04:57,440 --> 00:05:02,500 And if I open that WordPress dashboard I can see this little nag at the top says WordPress. 57 00:05:02,500 --> 00:05:05,540 4.6 is available please update now. 58 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:06,840 And there's a link there. 59 00:05:07,010 --> 00:05:13,850 Also inside of the dashboard area the at a glance which it says what version I'm running of Wordpress 60 00:05:13,940 --> 00:05:16,240 as well as what theme I'm running. 61 00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:24,210 So right now pause the video and find an older version of one of the sites that we've created together 62 00:05:24,210 --> 00:05:27,660 in this course and open up the Wordpress dashboard. 63 00:05:27,870 --> 00:05:34,590 Whether it's in your local development environment using map or another service or whether it's on one 64 00:05:34,590 --> 00:05:41,880 of your live hosting dashboards go ahead and log in to that WordPress dashboard and see what your status 65 00:05:41,880 --> 00:05:42,420 is. 66 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:49,610 Once you have your Wordpress dashboard open there are a few places to check out to see information about 67 00:05:49,610 --> 00:05:55,880 your Wordpress version and what updates are available including themes and plug ins. 68 00:05:55,940 --> 00:06:03,500 First on the dashboard admin bar at the top there's a little recycle or circular icon at the top that 69 00:06:03,500 --> 00:06:05,890 tells you how many updates are available. 70 00:06:05,930 --> 00:06:12,120 And this links through to this Updates page right here within the Wordpress dashboard. 71 00:06:12,200 --> 00:06:17,780 Also you can see under plug ins there's a little indicator that tells me I have 10 plug ins that are 72 00:06:17,780 --> 00:06:21,560 ready for an update and we'll be doing that in a future video. 73 00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:27,950 For now let's take a look at the updates page in the Wordpress dashboard and that'll give you a message 74 00:06:27,950 --> 00:06:35,420 at the top about the word press corps files and what version is currently available. 75 00:06:35,420 --> 00:06:42,860 Now I could just click Update now right now and update that WordPress version internally within my local 76 00:06:42,860 --> 00:06:43,500 site. 77 00:06:43,700 --> 00:06:47,110 But the first thing you want to do and this is important. 78 00:06:47,120 --> 00:06:50,240 You want to back up your database and files. 79 00:06:50,270 --> 00:06:58,250 It's always a recommended best practice before updating any WordPress versions plugins or themes that 80 00:06:58,250 --> 00:07:04,010 you back up the data and backup the files inside of your Wordpress installation in case if something 81 00:07:04,010 --> 00:07:08,180 were to go wrong you could revert back to your backup files. 82 00:07:08,180 --> 00:07:15,020 It rarely happens these days I haven't had an error in backing up plug ins themes or the word press 83 00:07:15,020 --> 00:07:21,020 corps in quite a long time a number of years but it's always a best practice to keep a current backup 84 00:07:21,170 --> 00:07:22,380 on file. 85 00:07:22,460 --> 00:07:29,540 What I've done inside my local host and I'll ask you to do is to create a full backup that's dated today 86 00:07:29,750 --> 00:07:35,070 so that you can always restore that backup in the case that this update goes wrong. 87 00:07:35,390 --> 00:07:43,250 The way I did that was I activated the all in one W.P. migration plugin and I clicked export and I saved 88 00:07:43,250 --> 00:07:50,600 my export file on my desktop under my live site folder and I created a folder called backups. 89 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:57,650 And here you can see the file name of my double you press backup file has the date and that's today's 90 00:07:57,650 --> 00:08:01,140 date and the name of the site right here. 91 00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:07,850 So back on the site now that I have my whole site backed up including files and the entire database 92 00:08:07,850 --> 00:08:10,540 and installation I can click update. 93 00:08:10,550 --> 00:08:14,730 Now go ahead and follow along and do that on your own site. 94 00:08:15,570 --> 00:08:16,250 OK great. 95 00:08:16,250 --> 00:08:20,330 I'm greeted with a welcome screen that states the version of Wordpress I'm using. 96 00:08:20,400 --> 00:08:29,220 There's always a welcome video and there's some notes about what's been added in these major feature 97 00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:31,010 updates. 98 00:08:31,060 --> 00:08:34,430 I hope that worked well for you if you are in your local environment. 99 00:08:34,500 --> 00:08:35,460 As I was. 100 00:08:35,550 --> 00:08:40,690 It took a few minutes probably about three or four minutes to update to this version. 101 00:08:40,710 --> 00:08:46,890 I find that when I'm on a live server like at flywheel or at say ground the updates that I do from the 102 00:08:46,890 --> 00:08:49,620 Wordpress dashboard are much quicker. 103 00:08:49,650 --> 00:08:55,920 Of course my server is connected to the Internet probably in a faster way than I am at home. 104 00:08:55,920 --> 00:08:57,030 One more thing to note. 105 00:08:57,090 --> 00:09:03,840 You may get a notification that a database update is required if you get a white screen inside the Wordpress 106 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:07,350 dashboard and it gives you a blue button that says update database. 107 00:09:07,350 --> 00:09:12,660 Now it's a good idea to do that as soon as possible and you should just hit that blue button and update 108 00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:15,450 the database right away. 109 00:09:15,450 --> 00:09:20,100 In this lesson you learned about the different types of updating that the word press corps files and 110 00:09:20,100 --> 00:09:24,660 database require to keep up with security threats and future releases. 111 00:09:24,660 --> 00:09:30,060 I hope you were able to find an older version of Wordpress from our previous lessons and log in to update 112 00:09:30,120 --> 00:09:31,510 through the dashboard. 113 00:09:31,530 --> 00:09:36,570 If not I'm sure you'll have a chance to update WordPress soon as they usually release three to four 114 00:09:36,570 --> 00:09:42,760 major feature updates every year in the next video you'll learn about plug in and theme updates. 115 00:09:42,810 --> 00:09:47,640 These are a little bit different in that themes and plug ins are for the most part provided by third 116 00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:50,820 party developers and not from WordPress directly. 117 00:09:50,820 --> 00:09:56,190 This means that updated versions should be tested to make sure they were correctly either before or 118 00:09:56,190 --> 00:09:57,230 after the update. 119 00:09:57,450 --> 00:09:58,250 Let's get to it.