I thought it would be a good idea to create this blog post because I noticed that a lot of people (bloggers, WP site owners, etc.) opt out of updating to the latest WordPress version either because they don’t know how to, or because they fear they will mess up their blog. Well fear no more because I’m going to show you the process. It’s really easy and takes about 5 minutes of your time.

Note: Updating to the latest WordPress version helps to keep your WP blog to stay secure. Although nothing is 101% hack proof, updating to the latest WordPress version ensures that your WP blog is free from bugs and security flaws.

Step 1: Back up your database

The first thing you’ll want to do before updating to the latest WordPress version is to back up your WordPress database –- a very important step! Backing up your database ensures if something goes wrong during the upgrade process you can always restore your database and your blog will still be intact.

Updating Your WordPress Version Automatically

If you really want to save time and you aren’t confident in updating your WordPress blog manually, I suggest you upgrade automatically. To upgrade manually, simply login to your dashboard and click on the “Please update now” link (assuming you need to upgrade your blog to the latest WP version.)

Next, simply click the “Update automatically” button and voila you’re all done – easy peasy! Now, sometimes upgrading to the latest WordPress version won’t be that simple and you may get error messages; if this is the case, make sure that all your WordPress plugins are disabled and then retry to upgrade manually. If you try to upgrade automatically to no avail, you’ll need to upgrade manually.

Step 2: Download [http://wordpress.org/download/] the latest WordPress version.

Step 3: Unpack/unzip the file.

Step 4: Acess the WordPress files to your website via FTP (e.g., Filezilla, Coreftp, etc).

If you’ve never used FTP before, download an FTP client and enter your website’s URL, your username and password. Locate your WordPress files by clicking on the public_html directory. Note: If your blog is located at www.yoursite.com/blog click on the public_html folder and then click on the “blog” folder.

Step 5: Next, delete the old wp-includes and wp-admin directories (folders).

Step 6: Locate the unzipped file that contains the new version of WordPress. Locate the wp-includes and wp-admin folders. Click and drag the wp-includes and wp-admin folders (directories) over to your server via FTP.

Step 7: Replace the other existing WordPress files with the new WP version files (e.g., index.php, wp-login.php). Go ahead and replace the main index.php file in the wp-content directory. Be careful not to delete the WordPress theme and plugins you’re using.

Step 8: And finally, make sure to delete the “.maintenance” file if you tried to auto install to no avail.

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