First of all backup your database follwing these insctructions.
- Get the latest WordPress zip (or tar.gz) file.
- Unpack the zip file that you downloaded.
- Deactivate plugins.
- Delete the old
wp-includes
andwp-admin
directories on your web host (through your FTPor shell access). - Using FTP or your shell access, upload the new
wp-includes
andwp-admin
directories to your web host, in place of the previously deleted directories. - Upload the individual files from the new
wp-content
folder to your existingwp-content
folder, overwriting existing files. Do NOT delete your existingwp-content
folder. Do NOT delete any files or folders in your existingwp-content
directory (except for the one being overwritten by new files). - Upload all new loose files from the root directory of the new version to your existing WordPress root directory.
NOTE – you should replace all the old WordPress files with the new ones in the wp-includes
and wp-admin
directories and sub-directories, and in the root directory (such as index.php
, wp-login.php
and so on). Don’t worry – your wp-config.php
will be safe.
Be careful when you come to copying the wp-content
directory. You should make sure that you only copy the files from inside this directory, rather than replacing your entire wp-content
directory. This is where your themes and plugins live, so you will want to keep them. If you have customized the default or classic themes without renaming them, make sure not to overwrite those files, otherwise you will lose your changes. (Though you might want to compare them for new features or fixes..)
Lastly you should take a look at the wp-config-sample.php
file, to see if any new settings have been introduced that you might want to add to your own wp-config.php
.
More details here.