How do I update my WordPress?

Video Transcript

Welcome to miHosting.net. I’m Miguel, one of the technicians available to you when you call us with a question. Today we’re going to answer a question from one of our clients. He’s asking how to update his website. He has a WordPress website. So today we’ll look at what you need to do to update your WordPress.

Why do you have to update your website? There are many users who don’t update. What happens then? Even though we put a lot of systems inside the servers to protect your site — like network firewalls and application firewalls — the truth is, if the site itself is insecure, there’s very little that can be done. We currently have more than 30,000 security filters, but updates are what fix bugs that appear frequently, generally security bugs. That’s why updating your site should be one of your top priorities when it comes to keeping it running. It’s essential to update your site constantly as soon as there’s a security warning or an update. Updates usually fix security issues and sometimes also fix design problems and search engine indexing issues. So an updated site is one that will stay secure, fast, and running smoothly. That’s why, don’t hesitate — your site should always be updated to the latest version.

Some users ask us if they can skip updates. You can skip them if you want to have problems. Therefore, never skip an update. Sometimes what happens with updates is that your template isn’t compatible with the latest update. That’s why it’s necessary to have templates that are updated at the same time as the main program. We’re talking about WordPress now. If your template doesn’t grow at the same pace as your WordPress, you’ll have problems. In that situation, what you need to do is change templates. Honestly, it can be a paid template or a free template that’s kept permanently up to date. In the most-downloaded list on WordPress, there are plenty of nice, practical, and useful templates that can let you update your site and always stay on the latest version.

There are also some paid templates that are extraordinary — for a few dollars, they do a very good job. Below, in the description, we’ll add some links to very high-quality templates that are always kept up to date and that will work perfectly on your website.

How do you update your WordPress? That’s the main question that inspired this video. First, when updating WordPress, you have to keep in mind three facets, three aspects of WordPress. The first is WordPress itself, which is like the main framework, the main program that encompasses everything. From time to time, for example — WordPress just released a recent update that fixes security issues detected recently. As soon as a WordPress update appears, you should update — that’s ideal. The ideal thing is to update if you want to live and sleep peacefully.

The second aspect that’s very important to update is templates, the design skins. Many users use the free templates offered by WordPress, while many others use paid templates. That’s a personal decision for the webmaster, basically a business decision, but it has a big impact. If an update for your template comes out, you also have to apply it. Many times webmasters stay up to date with the WordPress version but lag far behind on the template version. This is a very serious mistake because it causes many problems. It’s very easy, for example, to maintain security filters for the issues that come up in WordPress, but it’s harder to maintain security filters for template-specific issues. That’s why it’s essential to keep your template up to date with the latest update.

The third hugely important section to update is plugins, those little programs that extend the possibilities of your website. There are plugins for practically everything. Some have the function of keeping your website protected, while others make your website easier for search engines to index. I’ll also share some very useful plugins below — the ones we use most often at miHosting. As soon as a plugin update appears, you should apply it — don’t hesitate, you have to do it, because most of the time they fix security issues, and other times they expand capabilities and features.

Let’s recap: WordPress must be kept up to date, templates must be kept up to date, and plugins must be kept up to date. If you’d like, let’s now see in practice how to do an update on a WordPress website. I invite you to go to your computer screen, where we can see step by step how you should apply WordPress updates.

We’re now inside the WordPress administration section. As you can see here, there are two pending updates. It’s easy to identify because we have this little number in red and the number two in the section above. If we go into the updates section, it’ll tell us that two updates are pending. We have a plugin — in this case it’s the Google Maps plugin — and we have a theme pending an update. Let’s first go to the plugins section. We’ll look for which plugin it is. It’s easy to identify because this orange bar appears, and it’s also easy to update. Simply click here on Update Now. In Spanish, it would be “Actualizar ahora,” and the system starts updating the plugin, fixing any security issues, improving performance, and also adding to the plugin’s features whatever they may be. In a few seconds, very easily. We make one click and the system updates it automatically. We wait until the bar turns green, and that way it’ll be updated immediately.

OK! We’ve updated it. We see it in green, it tells us it’s updated. That simple. Now let’s go to the theme management, the appearance section, where you’ll remember we had a theme without an update. As you can see, this user has a total of four themes, but only one of them is the main theme of the website. What we’ll do is delete any theme we’re not using. We even have one to update, but it’s better to delete it and if we need it later, reinstall it. We’ll go into each of the themes and use the Delete button, and that way they’ll disappear from our installation, which also removes risks related to themes — possibly even serious risks. If we go back to Updates, we’ll see that we no longer have any pending. Plus, if you notice, we have the updated version of WordPress, the latest version — at this moment 4.7.1 — and our installation is now totally secure and ready to work at the highest level.

Allow me one very basic suggestion, but one that we’re used to seeing our clients neglect. You can install many plugins and many templates on your WordPress website. Most of them may even be inactive. If you have 10 templates but only use one, or you have 20 plugins and only have 5 active that are the ones you use, please delete everything you don’t use. The more streamlined your installation, the more secure, faster, and easier to maintain it will be. That’s why, a security tip for your website: delete all the templates you don’t need and delete all the plugins you’re not using. I also wanted to offer you our maintenance service. Some webmasters prefer, rather than doing the maintenance themselves, for miHosting and our technicians to take care of keeping the site permanently updated and protected against brute force attacks and other types of attacks that constantly occur across the internet. If you’d like us to do it, we have a maintenance service that costs 49 dollars a year, and with this service you sleep peacefully and don’t have to worry.

Many times, some people think it can be difficult to keep WordPress updated, but as you’ve just seen, it’s really simple. Sometimes we forget, so don’t worry — someone at miHosting is keeping an eye on your site every day to keep it updated. Question of the day: write to us below in the comments whether you find it easy to update your WordPress, whether you do it frequently, and also whether you use any system that automates the update process for you — those exist too.

We look forward to your comments here on our channel. That’s it for today’s video, I hope it was useful — that’s our goal, to make it a little easier for you to learn and update your website. I’d also ask you to give us a Like if you liked this — it helps many others see this video, people who don’t know how to update their WordPress. And if these topics interest you, please subscribe, so that every time we publish a video you’ll get it in your email and you’ll stay up to date on all the topics related to webmastering, web hosting, and web design, internet security — the topics we make videos about frequently. Greetings, see you.