WordPress is a great content management system, but it requires maintenance - you need to apply its updates on regular basis to keep it safe and secure. If you are not using our SmarWP plans (which includes WordPress updates by our Smart Updates technology) you need to apply the updates by yourself. This guide walk you trough this task.
After you have logged in Plesk Control Panel, you need to click 'WordPress' to get to WordPress Toolkit. (In case you have multiple hosting plans on your account, you can also click 'All subscriptions' from the topright menu and select the plan before clicking 'WordPress'.)
If you have WordPress installation that has not been updated automatically, the WordPress Toolkit displays an outdated and new version on the summary screen tab:
But don't update anything just yet! You should always take back up or your WordPress installation before making any changes to it. And if something goes wrong, you can easily restore the backup. To quickly backup your WordPress, select 'Back Up / Restore':
Click 'Backup' and WordPress Toolkit will back up your current WordPress installation, which will appear at the bottom of the same page:
On this same page you can also restore your WordPress from a backup file in case something goes wrong in a later upgrade. Close the backup window and then proceed to the updates by clicking 'Check updates':
You can select the desired WordPress core, plugins or theme updates - or 'Select All Updates'. (You can also skip a previous backup step by checking the 'Restore Point' box in this view to back up WordPress before applying updates). Finally, click 'Update' to apply the selected WordPress patches:
Finally, you will be notified when the updates are complete. Then check that your WordPress site works as expected, and if something went wrong, you can restore the backup taken before the upgrade from 'Back Up / Restore'.
If you want to set automatic updates, you can do so by clicking 'Autoupdate Settings' and setting how to perform updates automatically. Note that there is always a risk of site crashes in automatic updates, so we recommend that you make the updates manually - or alternatively outsource the updates to us by going to SmartWP hosting plans.
