Wendy Cholbi

Technology-to-English Translator

Free Download: WordPress Update Checklist

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wordpress-update-checklist
WordPress 4.4 was released on December 8, so it’s time to update your websites  yet again!

I’ve created a free downloadable PDF, the WordPress Update Checklist, to help you update safely and keep your website in tip-top condition.

There’s no sign-up required, no strings attached: Just click here to download the two-page PDF.

If your browser is set up to automatically display PDFs in a browser window, you may need to right-click (PC) or CTRL-click (Mac) and select “Save As” or “Save File As” to get the PDF to download to your computer.

You might also want to review my illustrated tutorial, How to Update WordPress (newly updated for WordPress version 4.4).

Feel free to share the PDF checklist with someone who needs it! Remember: Friends don’t let friends use outdated versions of WordPress.

Checklist image by otacke on Flicker, via a CC by-2.0 license.

How to update WordPress

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Did you notice a message at the top of your WordPress dashboard this week, telling you that WordPress 4.4 is available?

Complete with a command to “Please update now.”? The “please” softens it a bit, but it’s still a command.

This is WordPress’s way of helpfully notifying you that a new version is available. In this post, I’ll illustrate how easy it is to update WordPress, right from your dashboard.

You can also download my free 10-step WordPress Update Checklist for tips on pre- and post-update maintenance tasks that will keep your site in tip-top condition, or join my Peace of Mind Program to have me take care of all your WordPress updates for you.

Step 1: Back up your stuff.

Before you go clicking on the update link, it’s a really good idea to have a backup. Fortunately, plugins like BackupBuddy (paid, and that’s an affiliate link because I use BackupBuddy on every single site I manage and recommend it highly) or UpdraftPlus (free) make creating a backup straightforward and easy. Go back up your entire site before you read further. I’ll wait.

Ready to proceed? Got your backup stashed on your local computer (not the server)? Good. Now you can click that handy link.

Step 2. Click “Please update now.” at the top of your screen

wp-please-update-now You’ll be taken to a screen labeled “WordPress Updates”. There’s a note here about how it’s important to back up your database and files. Don’t you feel smart for already having that part taken care of?

Step 3. Click the button labeled “Update Now”.

wp-update-nowI won’t bore you too much with old-fogy tales of how, back in the pre-WordPress 2.7 days, we file-wranglers had to download the new version files manually, unzip them, and use FTP to install them (you young whippersnappers don’t appreciate the troubles we faced in those days… we walked five miles to school in the snow! Uphill! Both ways!).

Let’s just say a big group Thank You to WordPress for giving us the magic “Update Now” button. Yes, it’s truly automatic. One click does it all.

Step 4: Wait until you see “WordPress upgraded successfully” and are redirected to the credits page.

 

wp-welcome-to-44This may take a moment or two. Don’t click on anything until you see “Welcome to WordPress 4.4” message at the top of your screen. That’s it! You’re now free to move about your dashboard (Ding! In just a few moments our flight attendants will be coming through the cabin with a complimentary beverage service.).

Just because an update becomes available, should I install it?

In general, yes. WordPress publishes updates for a reason, usually improved features, improved security, or both. And you probably want these things.

However, if you are using a lot of plugins, you may want to wait a few days to give the plugin developers time to test their plugins with the new WordPress release, and if needed, release plugin updates. Then, after you update WordPress, you’ll want to update any plugins that have new versions available.

Another reason to update (fairly) promptly is that you want to install each update as it’s available, instead of waiting through several versions and installing them all at once. If you do installations one step at a time, there are fewer chances for things to go wrong. Yes, you can wait and batch-upgrade, and I’ve seen it work just fine in the vast majority of cases. But why tempt fate?

Download my free 10-step WordPress Update Checklist for tips on pre- and post-update maintenance tasks that will keep your site in tip-top condition, or join my Peace of Mind Program to have me take care of all your WordPress updates for you.

How to sign up for a WordPress.com account

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After you install Jetpack, you’ll see a message at the top of your WordPress dashboard telling you to “connect to WordPress.com.”

Wait, WordPress.com? Why would you use WordPress.com when you know you should avoid hosting a business site there?

Because many (though not all) of Jetpack’s features use the powerful servers at WordPress.com to do their work. And offloading server-intensive tasks to WordPress.com means your self-hosted site will load faster.

Here are just a few of the most useful Jetpack features that require a connection to WordPress.com:

  • WordPress.com Stats shows you statistics about your website visitors (a nice alternative to, or addition to, Google Analytics).
  • Subscriptions automatically emails new blog posts to subscribers, and gives you a sign-up widget for your sidebar.
  • Monitor checks your site every 5 minutes and emails you if your site goes down.
  • Publicize connects your blog with social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, so you can easily share your posts as they are published.
  • There are many more features, of course.

If you don’t have a WordPress.com account, you can sign up for free. Here’s the tricky part: Because you already have a self-hosted WordPress site, you don’t need to “create a website” on WordPress.com, and “create a website” is the only thing you can do on the WordPress.com homepage.

There is such a thing as a WordPress.com account that gives you access to things like Jetpack features without having a WordPress.com website attached to it. But it’s fiendishly difficult to find that option.

Here’s a shortcut!

The URL is: https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/?user=1

There are just three fields on the signup page: Email address, username, and password. Supply a valid email address, and pick your own username and password, and you’re good to go.

Below, I’ve documented how to find that signup page from the WordPress.com home page, since they make it so hard.

1. On the home page, don’t click the “Create Website” button right in the middle. Instead, click the “Log In” button at the top right corner:

WordPress.com home page -- click Log In, not Create a Website

2. On the login page, don’t login. Instead, click the gray “Register” link below the login form:

WordPress.com Login screen -- click Register

3. On the registration page, ignore the registration fields and click the tiny blue link in the bottom right corner that reads “sign up for just a username.”

Sign_up_for_WordPress_com

4. Finally, you’ve reached a form you don’t need to ignore! This is the signup form that can be reached directly with the URL https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/?user=1 .

When you enter your email address and username, the form will immediately tell you if either of them is already in use (if you signed up for a WordPress.com account in the distant past, here’s where you’ll find out about it). Enter a password, and the “Sign up” button will light up as your cue to proceed.

Signing up for a WordPress.com username only

Now you have a WordPress.com account that you can use to connect to Jetpack.

Troubleshooting WordPress automatic updates

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If your website uses WordPress, you should definitely take advantage of the automatic updater.

At the time of this writing, the most recent version of WordPress is 4.2.2, which was released on May 6, 2015. It’s a critical security release (as well as fixing 13 bugs in WordPress 4.2).

If your site is set up correctly and using the automatic updater, it probably updated itself, and sent you a confirmation email. Check your inbox for an email, dated May 6 or 7, from “WordPress” that has a subject line that looks like this:

[your-site-name] Your site has updated to WordPress 4.2.2

If you didn’t get a confirmation email, or you got an email urging you to update instead of confirming that the update already occurred, log into your WordPress dashboard to check whether automatic updates are enabled.

Visit Dashboard → Updates, and look for a line of text that reads “Future security updates will be applied automatically”. If, instead, you see a notification that future security updates will not be applied automatically, here’s how to find out why, and get your automatic updates back on track.

Why use automatic updates in the first place?

The WordPress automatic update process only applies to minor versions, which are the version numbers that contain two decimal points: 4.2 to 4.2.1, 4.2.1 to 4.2.2, and so on.

When version 4.3 comes out, sites running 4.2.2 will not update automatically, even if they have automatic updates enabled, because 4.2 is a major release. When version 5.0 comes out, sites running 4.whatever won’t update automatically either. Major releases still need to be done manually (back up first, please!).

WordPress automatic updates have been available for more than a year now, and are incredibly safe. They almost certainly won’t break your site, and in fact will keep your site safer by installing the latest security fixes.

I have automatic updates enabled on all of my sites and all of my client sites, and I have never once had a problem with an automatic update breaking a site, going back to version 3.7.1 when automatic updates were first introduced.

That’s not to say that automatic updates are guaranteed to be problem-free. Yes, there’s always a chance of a problem occurring. But the numbers (not just my sites, but reported by WordPress.org) give me confidence that the security and ease of the automatic update feature is worth that very slight risk.

Also, this is another reason to set up automatic backup schedules, so you never have to wonder if you have a recent-enough backup of your site.

Why aren’t WordPress automatic updates working on your site?

The best way to find out why automatic updates aren’t working on your site is to install the Background Update Tester plugin.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, visit Dashboard → Updates again. The plugin will automatically test your site and display the reason(s) automatic updates are failing.

If the stated reason is something you are comfortable fixing on your own, you can take care of the fix and re-run the test (simply visit Dashboard → Updates again) to verify that it worked.

If you can’t perform the fix yourself, or you don’t even understand what the message means, the simplest thing to do is copy the plugin’s message and submit a ticket to your web host. Explain as briefly as possible that you want to take advantage of WordPress’s automatic updates, but the updates are not working on your site. Then paste the exact description/message that Background Update Tester provides. Your host will know what it means and what to do next. (If they don’t, consider a new host.)

If you see the following message for more than a few minutes:

Automatic background updates require a number of conditions to be met. Testing now…

Then either your WordPress version is too old to be compatible with the plugin (the plugin requires at least version 3.7), or there’s a much bigger problem with your site. In the unlikely event that this happens to you, I can diagnose the trouble with a Website Tune-Up.

The only legitimate reason to disable the automatic updater

I can’t think of a real-world case in which a self-hosted WordPress site should not use the automatic updater. Period.

If you are using a theme or a plugin that breaks or crashes your site when WordPress is updated, that theme or plugin is the problem, not WordPress. Theme and plugin developers have plenty of advance warning when a new version of WordPress is being tested and released, and it’s their job to test their own code with updated versions of WordPress.

Plugin conflicts are much thornier, because it’s impossible to test every combination of plugins out there. But well-coded plugins cause fewer conflicts, and good developers respond promptly when their plugin is reported to conflict with another one.

Here’s the only real-world case I can think of for not using the automatic updater: If you are hosted at a “managed WordPress host”, the hosting company may handle the automatic updates instead of letting WordPress update on its own. In fact, managed WordPress hosts will usually update major versions of WordPress as well, not just the minor versions.

If you’re not sure whether this applies to you, check with your web host. Look for something in your hosting plan description about WordPress updates, or ask them directly.

If you’re using a managed WordPress host, you’re in good hands, and you don’t need to worry about the WordPress automatic updater.