How to Update WordPress Core: Step by Step Guide

WordPress core powers the foundation of your site, and every release ships with security patches, bug fixes, and compatibility improvements. Skipping updates leaves your site exposed to known vulnerabilities and gradually turns maintenance into a much bigger project than it needs to be.

Most updates go fine. Some do not, which is why a fair number of people Google their way to articles like how to update WordPress core. This guide covers every method for updating WordPress core and what to check before and after the update runs.

Before you update WordPress core: the pre-update checklist

A core update touches files that the rest of your site depends on. Three things to handle before you start:

• Take a full backup of your site.

Backup files and the database. Use a backup plugin, your host’s backup tool, or a maintenance platform that handles this automatically. If something goes wrong during the update, this is what you restore from.

• Check plugin and theme compatibility.

Confirm your active plugins and theme support the new WordPress version. Plugin developers usually publish compatibility notes in their changelog or on the plugin’s page in the WordPress repository. Outdated plugins are the most common reason an update breaks a site.

• Test on staging if the site is business-critical

Any reputable host offers a one-click staging environment. Run the update there first, click through the key pages, and only then update production.

How to update WordPress core: 4 quick ways

1. Update from the WordPress dashboard

This is the default path and the right choice for most single-site owners. WordPress shows a notification at the top of the admin area whenever a new version is available.

To run the update:

1. Log into your WordPress admin dashboard
2. Go to Dashboard > Updates
3. Click “Update to version X.X.X” under the WordPress section
4. Wait for the update to complete

During the update, your site enters maintenance mode and visitors briefly see a “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” message. This usually lasts a few seconds. Once the update finishes, WordPress redirects you to the welcome screen for the new version.

After it completes, check that the dashboard loads normally and that your front end still renders without errors. If the update stalls or you get stuck on the maintenance screen for more than a minute or two, see the manual method below.

This method can fail for a few reasons:

• file permission issues that prevent WordPress from writing to its own directories
• an interrupted connection mid-update,
• or a plugin conflict that triggers a fatal error.

When that happens, the manual method through FTP is your fallback.

2. Update manually via FTP or SFTP

Manual updates are slower but they work when the dashboard method does not. You will need an FTP client and your host’s FTP credentials.

Here is the process:

• Download the latest WordPress release from wordpress.org/download
• Unzip the file on your computer. You should see a folder called “wordpress” containing all the core files
• Connect to your site via FTP/SFTP using your hosting credentials
• Navigate to your WordPress root directory (usually public_html or www)
• Delete the existing wp-admin and wp-includes folders from your server
• Upload the new wp-admin and wp-includes folders from the WordPress download
• Upload the individual files from the root of the WordPress folder (wp-login.php, wp-settings.php, etc.) and let them overwrite the existing files
• Do not touch the wp-content folder or wp-config.php. wp-content holds all your themes, plugins, and uploads. wp-config.php holds your database credentials and site-specific settings
• Log back into your WordPress admin. If a database upgrade is required, WordPress will prompt you. Click the button to run it

Once the database upgrade completes, the site is on the new version. Run through the same post-update checks you would after a dashboard update.

3. Update via WP-CLI

WP-CLI is a command-line tool for managing WordPress installations. If you are comfortable in the terminal and have SSH access to your server, this is the fastest method.

Three commands cover the workflow:

wp core check-update

Tells you if a new version is available.

wp core update

Downloads and installs the latest version.

wp core update-db

Runs the database upgrade if the new version requires one.

WP-CLI is also useful when you need to update WordPress on a site where the dashboard is broken or inaccessible. It is the standard tool for anyone managing WordPress at any meaningful scale.

What to do after a WordPress core update?

Most reports of a core update breaking a site trace back to skipping the post-update checks. Five minutes here saves hours later.

• Load the front end of your site and click through a few pages, including layout issues and broken images
• Test things that are important for your site, such a contact forms, the checkout process if you run WooCommerce, login flow, search, or anything custom
• Check your error log for new warnings or fatal errors. Your host’s control panel has a log viewer, or you can enable WP_DEBUG_LOG temporarily
• Clear caches at every layer: any caching plugin, your host’s server cache, and your CDN if you have one.

If something does look broken, deactivating recently updated plugins one at a time is usually the fastest way to find the conflict.

Managing WordPress core updates across multiple sites with WP Umbrella

Everything above assumes you are updating one site, or maybe a handful. The problem changes shape entirely when you are responsible for 30 client sites, or 100. Logging into each dashboard becomes impractical. Tracking which sites are on which version turns into a spreadsheet exercise. And the risk of an unmonitored update breaking a client site is constant.

This is where a maintenance platform like WP Umbrella earns its place. The job stops being “how do I update this site” and becomes “how do I update this entire portfolio on a schedule, with backups in place and notifications when something needs attention.”

A few things change when you have that layer in place:

• You see all available core updates across every site you manage in one view. No more logging into each dashboard to check what is pending or which sites are running which version.

• You can run updates across multiple sites from a single screen instead of logging into each one individually. The action that takes a few seconds per site adds up fast across a portfolio.

• Scheduled backups run on every site you manage, so a recent restore point exists before any update goes out. If something does break after an update, you have a backup ready to roll back to. WP Umbrella provides GDPR-compliant backups that are stored for 50-days on their server and can be restored with one-click.

• You can schedule updates to run on a cadence that suits your workflow, rather than doing them ad hoc whenever you remember to check.