Updating WordPress

Upgrading WordPress Core Manually

1. First create a full backup of your website. This is very important in case you make a mistake.
2. Download the newest WordPress ZIP file from wordpress.org.
3. Unzip the file into a directory on your local machine or in a separate directory on your website.
4. Deactivate all of the plugins on your WordPress site.
5. Go to your website root directory and delete your ‘wp-includes’ and ‘wp-admin’ directories. You can do this via sFTP or via SSH.
6. Upload (or copy over) the new wp-includes and wp-admin directories from the new version of WordPress you unzipped to your website root directory to replace the directories you just deleted.
7. Don’t delete your wp-content directory or any of the files in that directory. Copy over the files from the wp-content directory in the new version of WordPress to your existing wp-content directory. You will overwrite any existing files with the same name. All of your other files in wp-content will remain in place.
8. Copy all files from the root (‘/’) directory of the new version of WordPress that you unzipped into your website root directory (or the root directory of your WordPress installation). You will overwrite any existing files and new files will also be copied across. Your wp-config.php file will not be affected because WordPress is never distributed with a wp-config.php file.
9. Examine the wp-config-sample.php which is distributed with WordPress to see if any new settings have been added that you may want to use or modify.
10. If you are upgrading manually after a failed auto-update, remove the .maintenance file from your WordPress root directory. This will remove the ‘failed update’ message from your site.
11. Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin/ where you may be asked to sign-in again. You may also have to upgrade your database and will be prompted if this is needed. If you can’t sign-in, try clearing your cookies.
12. Re-enable your plugins which you disabled earlier.
13. Clear your browser cache to ensure you can see all changes. If you are using a front-end cache like ‘varnish’ you should also clear that to ensure that your customers can see the newest changes on your site.
14. Your upgrade is now complete and you should be running the newest version of WordPress.

Upgrading WordPress Plugins Manually

1. First back-up your WordPress site if you haven’t already.
2. Download a ZIP file of the plugin you need to upgrade. You can usually find most plugins on the plugin repository along with a link to download the newest ZIP file.
3. Unzip the plugin onto your local machine. It will create a directory called ‘plugin-name’ with all the files under it.
4. Use sFTP to delete the existing plugin directory from the wp-content/plugins/ directory on your site.
5. Replace the deleted directory by uploading the unzipped plugin to the wp-content/plugins/ directory leaving it in a directory that looks like (for example) wp-content/plugins/plugin-name
6. Sign in to your WordPress site. Go to the ‘Plugins’ menu and verify that the plugin you upgraded is the newest version.

Upgrading WordPress Themes Manually

Note, if you are running a customized theme you will lose any customizations if you simply overwrite your theme with a new one. In this case you will need to work with a developer to integrate your customizations into your new WordPress theme instead of just overwriting the old theme. If you have not customized your theme’s code and have merely customized it using the web admin interface that WordPress provides (without changing any of it’s files), then you can follow the procedure below:

1. First create a backup of your WordPress site.
2. Download a ZIP file of the theme you plan to upgrade.
3. Unzip the theme files onto your local machine.
4. Use sFTP to delete your existing theme directory from the wp-content/themes/ directory.
5. Replace the deleted directory by uploading the unzipped theme into your wp-content/themes/ directory. You should now have a structure that looks something like wp-content/themes/theme-name/
6. Sign into your WordPress site. Go to Appearance > Themes and verify you are running the newest version of your theme.

One-Click WordPress installation to automatically update

You can use either the One-Click Installs page in the panel or log into your WordPress panel to set up automatic upgrades.

To use the One-Click Install feature in the panel to request upgrade notifications:

1. Open your panel at (Panel > ‘Goodies’ > ‘One-Click Installs’)
2. Choose your domain.
3. Click the edit link under the ‘Upgrade Action’ column.
4. Select the Upgrade automatically option.

Please note that all One-Click Installs require that the domain they are being installed onto is set to Fully Hosted.

• When you request automatic upgrades, DreamHost updates the packages in the installer whenever they become available and notifies you via email.

• You can also update your site by logging into your WordPress dashboard. From there, you can update your core WordPress install, plugins, and themes.

WordPress Database Structure

WordPress is written using PHP as its scripting language and MySQL as its database management system. For using WordPress you don’t need to learn php & MySQL, but if you have basic understanding of how it works that will be enough to solve any problems that you will get into. Here in this article you will learn about WordPress database structure.

Default installation of WordPress comes with eleven tables. These are the following tables.

1. wp_commentmeta
• Each comment features information called the meta data and it is stored in the wp_commentmeta.
2. wp_comments
• The comments within WordPress are stored in the wp_comments table.
3. wp_links
• The wp_links holds information related to the links entered into the Links feature of WordPress.
4. wp_options
• The Options set under the Administration > Settings panel are stored in the wp_options table.
5. wp_postmeta
• Each post features information called the meta data and it is stored in the wp_postmeta. Some plugins may add their own information to this table.
6. wp_posts
• The core of the WordPress data is the posts. It is stored in the wp_posts table. Also Pages and navigation menu items are stored in this table.
7. wp_terms
• The categories for both posts and links and the tags for posts are found within the wp_terms table.
8. wp_term_relationships
• Posts are associated with categories and tags from the wp_terms table and this association is maintained in the wp_term_relationships table. The association of links to their respective categories are also kept in this table.
9. wp_term_taxonomy
• This table describes the taxonomy (category, link, or tag) for the entries in the wp_terms table.
10. wp_usermeta
• Each user features information called the meta data and it is stored in wp_usermeta.
11. wp_users
• The list of users is maintained in table wp_users.

Above are the eleven tables, wp_ is the database prefix, we can change database prefix while installing WordPress.