How To Upgrade To WordPress 4.1 “Dinah”

A new version of WordPress has just been made available for download or update to your dashboard. Codenamed “Dinah”, in honor of Jazz single Dinah Washington features a new theme called Twenty Fifteen, added support for more languages and a new Log out everywhere feature.

The new theme brings support for many languages with the help of Google’s Noto font family which fits perfectly on any screen size. The new blog-focused theme puts content at center stage whether viewed on a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.

Distraction free writing is another feature that was also enhanced with this release. When you turn on the distraction-free writing mode and start typing, all the distractions (menus, sidebars, and other text) fade away.. letting you focus solely on writing your thoughts.

The Log out everywhere feature allows you to be signed into WordPress on one computer and log out anywhere on another computer. It’s cool, so you don’t have to worry about not logging out everytime you leave your computer.

Plugin recommendation and Vine embeds are all new or features that were enhanced with this release. This brief tutorial is going to show you how to install or update WordPress to this latest version if you haven’t already done so.

Before upgrading your WordPress blog, it’s always recommended that you backup your site and its database content. Doing so will allow you to revert the changes just in case something goes wrong with the upgrade.

There are many plugins and tools online that will help backup your site. If you’re not currently backing up your site regularly or don’t have a backup tool, then you should definitely look into getting one for your site.

So, before upgrading, please go and do a backup.

When you’re ready, logon to your WordPress Dashboard and you’ll be prompted to update using the Update Now button. For most users, this is all they need to do. WordPress will download and update the site content with the latest version..

 

Another way to update WordPress is by connecting to your host server via SSH and download the latest version and overwriting existing WordPress files and folders. Here’s how I normally perform a WordPress upgrade to my blog.

I have straight file permissions which prevent me from updating WordPress via the dashboard. To update WordPress, I must sign on to my host via SSH and download the latest WordPress content and overwrite existing one.

Below are the steps:

I first backup my WordPress content along with its database. Then I run the commands below to download WordPress

cd /tmp/ && wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Next, I run the commands below to extract the downloaded archived file.

tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz

Finally, I copy WordPress newest content and paste it to my site root directory which will overwrite all exiting files and folders. Exiting folders and files that are not including in the new release won’t be touched.

For example, the /uploads folder is never part of WordPress releases. But the /uploads if there contains all your media and images. Mistakenly overwriting this folder is a huge mistake so it’s never including with WordPress releases. Since this folder isn’t part of WordPress releases, when you copy and paste newer content to overwrite existing ones, all the folders that don’t have newer versions including /uploads will not be touched on the host.

WordPress will only updates folders and files that have newer versions. The wp-config.php file isn’t touched since it’s not included in WordPress releases.

I then run the commands below to copy the newer content to overwrite existing ones.

sudo cp -rf /tmp/wordpress/* /var/www/html/

That’s it!

Enjoy WordPress!