course

1.
COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT April 23, 2015
Ensure Your WordPress Site is updated to the Latest Version
You may have noticed that there have been updates occurring in WordPress themes and plugins
this week. If you would like to read a more detailed report about these updates and why they’re
happening, you can check out this article on Post Status:
https://poststatus.com/coordinated-plugin-updates-to-address-security-vulnerability-in-many-
popular-wordpress-plugins/
How does this affect your WordPress site?
If your WordPress site is live or in development on a server you may have received an automatic
WordPress update notice by email.
For this course I’m building the WordPress eCommerce Storefront site on this domain,
http://www.mercdrainplug.com. I received an automatic email notification that my site was
updated. By default, every site has automatic updates enabled for core releases and translation
files. It’s a good idea to go to your website, login to your dashboard and update your plugins and
themes. In case your site did not automatically update, then you should update your WordPress
site to the latest version.
Why You Should Have the Latest Version of WordPress
This article gives you all the reasons as to why you should update to the latest version of
WordPress: http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/update-wordpress/
The five main reasons for keeping every aspect of your WordPress site up to date, are:
 Security
 Performance
 Bug fixes
 Compatibility
 Features
It also explains three main ways to keep your site up to date:
 Doing it all manually
 Via automatic updates
 Using a plugin
I’ll briefly explain how to update your WordPress Storefront site manually.

2. Before you do any updates, I suggest you backup your website. Here’s an excellent article that
discusses different backup plugins for your site:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/7-best-wordpress-backup-plugins-compared-pros-and-cons/
Doing a Manual Update
Login to your site Dashboard > Updates. You’ll see a similar screen below. You will see which
plugins and themes are ready for updating:
Click on the Update Now if see a button to update. Ensure you update your plugins and themes.
To update themes or plugins, simply select the checkboxes and click the “Update Themes” or
“Update Plugins” button.
Here’s the same screen now updated.
Now you’re all set!