Introduction
You know when someone tells you something is really important, but it feels so scary that you just avoid it altogether? Like, when you know you should go in for a colonoscopy, but you just find a way to postpone it because it seems so awful that you find every reason in the book to put it off for another day?
Well, updating your website is one of those things for a lot of business owners I’ve met. They know it’s important, but it’s just a little scary, so they put it off for another day. I’m here to show you how to update a WordPress site the right way, without losing your work, without breaking anything – so you can get on with your day and get rid of that nagging anxiety that’s been hanging over your head.
Why You Should Update Your WordPress Site Regularly
WordPress is a great tool for building a website. It’s free. It’s open-source.
But, one of the problems of open-source code is that It’s also a great way for hackers to find security breaches. Hackers are always looking for ways to redirect traffic, install malware, and take over people’s data. When someone hacks your business site, it could take a lot of time and money to get your site back. It’s a major problem for any website owner when they get hacked.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use WordPress. It just means you need to make sure and take some steps to keep your site updated and safe.
So, there are always updates being done to fix things that hackers have found a way to get into. WordPress updates the core files to keep up with the security issues as they are found. When this happens, plugin and theme developers have to quickly release updates for their products so they can keep up with the changes. Security fixes and vulnerability patches are released, and you need to update your site to get the latest versions.
But don’t just think you can avoid the problem by not updating your site. Outdated software is the main problem that hackers exploit. So, by keeping your site updated, you are taking the most important step in keeping your site safe.
Technology is always changing. The sites I built a few years ago are already outdated and won’t be as good as the sites of today. That’s just the nature of websites. Everything changes fast in the tech world. When you update your site, you get access to new features and functionality that weren’t even available in the past.
As things change, you will also need to change your website to keep up. If your plugins and themes are not updated to keep up with WordPress, it’s only a matter of time before things break. As things change, the code that was used to connect with things before may not be compatible with the new code that is being used on the updated version. So, you just have to keep up by updating.
Prerequisites: What to Do Before You Update
Backing Up Your Site
There are two parts of a WordPress website – the database, and the files. The database is where your information is stored, such as the content of the website, the user information, etc. The files are the skeleton of the website or the code, as well as the images. In order to get a complete backup, you need to have both.
The database can be exported from the mySQL admin dashboard. In fact, that used to be the only way to backup the database. It was a little scary, I must admit. But it quickly became routine and everyone knew how to do it. Nowadays, it’s not as common to back up the database in this way. Although it is still possible, technology has advanced and we now have much more efficient, and easy-to-use tools at our disposal.
File-System Backup (themes, plugins, uploads). Just like the database exports, the file system backups have become more streamlined and quick. What used to take all day now takes just a few minutes. Where we used to depend on FTP clients to download files directly from the server, there are tools that are more efficient to use and way more user-friendly.
My favorite backup tool is ManageWP.com. It’s a third-party tool that lets you manage all of your WordPress sites from a single dashboard. There are other tools like it, but I’m happy with the ease of use, the many tools and services they offer, and the low price. I like having a backup separate from the backup on the hosting account. It allows you to have a second backup in case anything goes wrong with the backup at your hosting account. Plus, it can help in the event that something happens to physically destroy your server.
It may sound like it would never happen, but I’ve actually seen it a couple of times where a client lost their entire site because the hosting account backup was backing up when their site was down and got a blank backup. Then, their site crashed and there was no backup to restore from. It was so sad for those clients because they ended up having to spend lots of money rebuilding their entire websites.
Should You Set Up a Staging Environment?
A staging environment is a copy of your live website that you can use for testing things. A few questions you can ask yourself in deciding whether you need a staging environment are “How much would it impact your business if your site was down?”, “Is a staging site feasible?”, “Will the premium plugin licenses work on a staging site?”
If you decide that you want to set up a staging site, you will need to do a few things to get your staging site set up.
How to set up staging environment
If you want to make a staging site, you’ll need to backup your website first. You can use the backup tool in your hosting account or my favorite, managewp.com.
Once you have a full backup (files and database) you can proceed with setting up a staging environment. Many hosting companies offer one-click staging setup. This is handy and if your hosting company offers this, try it out and see how you like it. If not, you’ll need to create a place for the new installation to live. If you have the option to do a temporary domain, that’s a good option. If not, you’ll need to set up a subdomain for your testing environment. Many times people just opt for test.yourdomain.com or something similar.
Once you have the temporary domain or the subdomain set up, clone the website to that place either through automatic tools within your hosting dashboard, or using a plugin, or another tool, such as managewp.com. If all else fails, you could clone it manually with FTP and copy all the files and the database. Of course, that’s a bigger job and not the way I prefer for most websites.
Now, It’s Time to Update Your WordPress Site
There are three parts to update – WordPress Core, plugins, and themes. You can update each from the dashboard, or use the tools in ManageWP.com to update automatically all at once. When updating from the dashboard, click on the circle with the number next to it in the top black bar.
Once there, you’ll need to check all of the things you want to update and click update. Repeat this for each type of update (WordPress core, plugins, and themes)
What to watch for during the update process
When you’re updating the site from the dashboard, make sure you NEVER click away from the page while it’s updating. If you don’t let it run to completion, the site will be stuck in maintenance mode and you’ll need to delete the maintenance file for your site to function again.
Testing Your Site After Updates
Once your updates have completed, you will need to clear your cache and check the site for anything that looks broken or weird. Sometimes it will be obvious that something broke with the update. If that happens, you’ll need to restore from your backup and troubleshoot to find what the update was that broke the site by checking the error logs or updating things one by one and checking after each update to see what broke.
You can also check the error logs for any PHP or javascript errors. Sometimes these may not be obvious at first glance.
Once you know what the update was that broke the site, you will be able to restore from your backup once again and update the other things. The one that broke will need to be fixed or replaced. Sometimes, a plugin developer will know about a problem and provide an update to fix the problem within a short amount of time. If that doesn’t happen, you can look for an alternative plugin to do what the broken one did.
What can go wrong when you’re updating?
When you’re updating, there are a lot of possible things that could go wrong. This is why it’s so important to back up your site before you begin. If you back up your site properly, you always have a way to get back to where you were before you updated. So, don’t let the fear of something going wrong stop you from updating. It’s so important to update your site that it needs to be done on a regular basis.
That being said, here are a few things that might go wrong when you are updating your site:
- White Screen of death (WSOD)
- Plugin or Theme conflicts
- Locked in Maintenance Mode
- Critical Error
Troubleshooting Common Update Issues
Timeout Errors or White Screen of Death
Most of the time, these errors are just from a timeout issue, and if you refresh the page, you can resolve the issue and continue the update. If that doesn’t work and you have a critical or fatal error, you can restore from your backup and check the error logs to find out why the error occurred. Once you know what caused the error, you can troubleshoot that issue.
What to Do If Your WordPress Site is Locked in Maintenance Mode
If your site gets locked in maintenance mode, you need to delete a file to get it back. To do this, go to your file manager inside the hosting account for your website. Look for a file called .maintenance in your root folder and delete that file.
Restoring from backup if something goes wrong
There’s always the possibility that something could go wrong. If that happens, you can always restore from your backup. If you made your backup through your hosting account, you can restore from there. If you used managewp.com, you can restore by going to backups and clicking on the date and the backup that you want to restore from. Then, click on the restore button. It takes a few minutes and then your site is back to where it was before the problem happened.
I hope this has been helpful for you. Feel free to pop in to my weekly Tech Tea Parties to get more answers to your tech questions. I love helping people out and would love to personally answer your questions.
See ya soon!