To secure your wordpress blog your first step is to keep your wordpress version upto date. But at some point you may not be able to update/upgrade wordpress automatically. You need to do it manually. So upgrade wordpress manually to solve your problems and in this tutorial i will show you how to do it.

Note: First take a complete backup of your site or using any wordpress plugin. This article may help you take automatic wordpress backup.

Where Do I download new version of WordPress?

You will get the new wordpress version at the self hosted wordpress. If you like to get the older versions of WordPress go to WordPress Release Archives.

How Do I Upgrade WordPress?

1. First login to your WordPress dashboard. In this tutorial i am going to upgrade wordpress from 3.1 to 3.2.1. Look at the wordpress dashboard overview.

After you login to the WordPress dashboard. Goto plugins and deactivate all the plugins.

2. After you deactivate all the plugins, logout from the WordPress dashboad.

3. Login to your hosting cPanel or use any of your favorite FTP client. Goto your sites root directory and locate the core WordPress files.

4. Delete wp-admin and wp-includes folder. There is no need to delete the files, since they can be replaced or overwritten while you copy the files. Just delete those 2 folders.

Note: Do not delete wp-content folder.

5. Open the older WordPress version which you downloaded. Copy all the WordPress files and folders except wp-content.

Note: Do not copy wp-content folder.

6. Once you have done this, you are done with upgrade.

7. Now try to login to your WordPress dashboard. You will see this message. Click on “Update WordPress Database”.

8. Click on “continue” to login to your wordpress dashboard.

You have now successfully upgraded wordpress. Once you login you can see the overview of your current version. Here i have successfully upgraded to wordpress 3.2.1 from 3.1.

Let us know if you face any problem. We will help you solve them.