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In this video you'll explore the different ways to update WordPress plugins and themes how you can be

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notified of plug in and theme update availability and some quick fixes in case something's not working.

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After an update because plugins and themes are the responsibility of the author and developer and are

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generally works in progress it makes sense that by updating you could potentially introduce incompatibilities

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or other errors.

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Still it's best to update as soon as there's a new version available.

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For security reasons but having a quick restore available makes it painless to keep everything updated

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properly.

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The first thing I'll do and suggest that you do also is go back into our WordPress dashboard at the

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fire weed photography or our local installation or the server installation that we had been working

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on before.

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Here I am on the Welcome to WordPress 4.6 page.

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After doing an update of the word press corps files from the last video I can still see that I have

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14 updates available.

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If I roll over this arrow here it says 10 plugin updates for theme updates.

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Now as I said before plugin updates can be very important especially for security reasons.

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You should get a notification on your dashboard here and sometimes via email if you're monitoring security

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for your web sites in other ways.

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We'll talk about monitoring security for multiple Web sites for yours and client sites in a future video.

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But for now let's talk about updating plugins and the different ways that you can do so.

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First let's talk about updating plugins individually.

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If you roll over the plugins area and just click installed plugins that will show you all your plug

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ins and you can see via a color indication which plugins are due for an update.

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You can see there's a yellow and orange indicator here under each of the plug ins that are due for an

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update whether they're active or not on the Web site.

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First thing I'll do is just go down to one of the plug ins I have that's due for an update and if you

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click here under details it will open a modal window where you can look at what's been updated in the

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latest version.

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So this plug in version 5.4 9 for all in one WP migration has been tested up to 4.6.

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So now that I have version 4.6 installed of Wordpress I can go ahead and feel comfortable updating this

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plugin so I can update just this plugin by going over here and clicking update now you'll see that it'll

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show an updating rotating set of arrows and when it's finished it'll give me a success message.

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I often like going in and updating plugins one at a time like this because I can go back and check the

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functionality of the site after updating each plugin especially those that I suspect might have a functionality

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error or a conflict when I make my update.

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For now that was just a backup and migrations plug in.

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So I'm not too worried about it now.

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If I update the code snippets plug in for example I just hit update now and let it update.

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If I have any code active on my website I go and check the functionality of that code right away and

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make sure as I refresh the web page that everything that I have custom coded is working well.

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Now what if I update a plug in and it breaks the website.

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Or even worse yet gives me the white screen of death where I can't even get in to my wordpress dashboard.

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What can you do.

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And I hope you're thinking oh that's easy Greg.

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We learned that in a previous chapter where we broke a Web site and restored it by renaming the plugin

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file folder thereby deactivating a plug in and getting back into the Wordpress dashboard to deal with

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our errors.

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And that would be correct.

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So here in my local environment I don't need to log in via FCP but I can go into the Windows Explorer

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and look at my WP content folder and my plugins folder and I can look at the plug ins folders that are

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there that I can rename and deactivate manually try that on your own site.

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Pass the video now and choose an active plug in that you can deactivate manually by going into the file

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structure either via FCP inside of the site Ground file manager via the see panel or using Windows Explorer

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or the finder on a Mac I hope that went well for you.

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I'm going to choose the all in one W.P. migration plugin just to do my deactivation test because I know

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it's an activated plug in on this Web site and since it's my local development environment is easy for

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me to go in with Windows Explorer and find my file structure.

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So inside of Windows Explorer I know that in my local development environment it's under Seacole and

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under the map folder and if I look under H.T. docs I have the live Desch site site which is the one

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that I'm working on here.

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You can see in the U R L It's right there open up windows explorer one more time inside W.P. content.

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I have my plug ins folder and there's the all in one W.P. migration folder that contains the plug and

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files.

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So I've clicked a second time to highlight the name of the plug in and I'm just going to type Dasch

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rename and that'll deactivate the plug in for me.

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So if I go back into the Wordpress dashboard I'm on the plugins page I can just refresh the page and

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you can see that the plug in will become deactivated.

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Here it is here it's showing it inside the database but it shows me an error.

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It's been deactivated due to an error.

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The plugin file does not exist.

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That just means that it's looking for it under the original name and it can't find it.

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So it's deactivated this plug in.

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And if that were causing the problem if my site had gone down or something I couldn't restore my wordpress

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dashboard and my web site I just manually deactivating that in.

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So I'll just quickly go back and re activate this.

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Now if I if I rename it to the original name and then I go back and refresh the page again it doesn't

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automatically reactivate the plug.

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You have to do that through the Wordpress dashboard so I can leave that plug in de-activated and try

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to mitigate the problem.

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If it's the one causing the problem but I know it wasn't so I can re-activated again if I want to.

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Now another way to update your plugins is to go under dashboard to the updates page and this shows you

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all the updates including WordPress core plug in files as well as themed files down at the bottom.

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So I can see that I have all of these plug ins that are scheduled to be updated and if I want to I can

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select them in a group or I can even click select all which will check all the boxes and I can click

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Update plugins.

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Now this could take a little bit of time depending on how large the plug ins are and how fast the server

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is and how many you have a pause the video now and let the update finish.

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As you can see I have a nice complete report after all of my plugin updates and a green line for each

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of the ones that successfully updated.

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Hopefully you'll have each of them update successfully for you.

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You can see that it gives you a report at the top that it is enabling a maintenance mode and that's

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basically a white screen with some black copy on the live Web site that says maintenance mode is in

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progress.

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Please check back later.

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And then at the bottom it disabled maintenance mode and all updates have been completed.

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You can return to the plugins page or return to the Wordpress updates page.

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But sometimes because this takes a little while.

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I'd rather do each plug in individually and periodically test the Web site to make sure that there's

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no conflicts during the process instead of doing a super large update all at once.

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Another issue potentially is that the longer you wait over time the more plug ins need updates and the

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more chance you have of a conflict between two plug ins or between a version of Wordpress and the plug

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in that you're updating.

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I like to update plug ins as often as possible and is convenient.

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And then the next video will talk about ways to monitor multiple sites from one dashboard like here.

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The one I use is managed W.P..

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In any case let's return to the Wordpress updates page and we can look at what's left and I can see

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that I do have the latest version of Wordpress under plug ins.

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It says that all plug ins are up to date and it shows that I have four themes ready for an update.

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Now let's talk about themes.

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I have three default WordPress themes that came with my wordpress installation originally that are here

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and I know I'm not going to be using it all.

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So instead of clogging up my web site and my file structure and database with themes that I don't need

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I'll often go ahead and delete these themes when they're ready for an update and they're giving me that

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little nag message up here or up here.

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And so what I'll do is go under appearance and themes and unfortunately it still takes a couple of clicks

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to delete themes that you don't need.

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But here's how it's done.

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I'll just go here and click theme details.

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And once it shows me the big detail screen I can click delete and I have to confirm that I want to delete

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that theme takes just a couple of seconds.

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And there we go.

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So I go into each of these themes that is not active and that I don't need and I'll make these three

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clicks per theme just to delete them out of my system the details delete and OK

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great.

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Now what's left we could see under our theme screen that I have the original manual child theme that

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we created in one of our previous chapters and we have another child theme that we created using the

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plug in right here and that is the active theme.

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And I have the parent theme called affinity which has a new version available.

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Now here's where updating our themes is important and it's just good to point out that since we're using

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a child theme we don't need to update the child theme because it's not made by anyone else but ourselves

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but the parent theme can be updated and we won't overwrite any of the changes we've made in the child

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themed code by updating the parent theme.

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So it's a good idea just to click Update now that will leave us on the same screen and when the parent

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theme gets updated none of the changes in our child theme get over written great.

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I've got a success message read appear at the top you know I could have done that theme update just

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by going to the updates screen where I was before and doing it just like we did the plugins down at

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the bottom.

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Well now I don't have an update Knag right here at the top nor any notifications down on my side menus

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under plug ins or under updates here.

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And if I go to this Updates page you could see that everything is updated and there now I do want to

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go over to my Web site itself make sure I refresh the page make sure there's no problems with my theme

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or on my Web site at all.

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This looks great just like we had set it up before.

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Excellent and I'll go down to the bottom and make sure my customization here in the child theme is still

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active and looking good.

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That looks great.

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Now it's worth noting that you can deactivate a theme if you introduce an update and it does break the

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Web site in some way.

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You would just go back into your file structure either via FCP or via the Explorer or the finder.

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If you're working locally go back into the WP content folder.

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Open up themes and identify which theme you just updated that's causing the problem and you can go through

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the same technique by just renaming that theme and then it will deactivate itself.

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In this lesson you worked on one of your previous WordPress installations either locally or at your

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live server and updated plugins and themes.

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You also looked at how you would go about deactivating a plug in or theme.

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In the case that the update has caused a problem in the next video we'll look at some different options

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for managing multiple web sites from one central location.

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There are a bunch of different third party services many free with paid upgrades that can make it easier

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to manage updates for multiple sites using this process.

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You can manage a group of Wordpress sites for yourself or for your clients saving time by accessing

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them as a group instead of having to log into each one individually.

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See their