Upgrade WordPress Plugins and Recover From a Broken Upgrade

WordPress is the CMS application that owns 27% of the internet now. It’s widely accepted as the first choice website development application for users around the globe.

They publish their major upgrades time and time again and users can easily upgrade to the latest version from the control panel itself. You can also do it by simply replacing the files. With each upgrade, all the plugins included needs to be upgraded to their latest compatible versions. These plugin vendors published their own versions time and time again. These releases will be listed in your admin panel and you can safely upgrade the plugins from there.

Sometimes, there can be issues where you can’t upgrade from the admin panel Or a partial upgrade is done. This breaks the site and you will be wondering why did I do that…? Don’t panic, there are simple ways by which you can fix these errors.

The first method to perform a plugin update it to do it from the WordPress admin panel itself. Click on the plugin tab and then the option to upgrade to the latest version will be shown to you. You can simply click it to Upgrade. Another method is to rename the old plugin directory in “wp-content/plugins/” directory and replace it with the directory from the latest version. The new plugin versions can be downloaded in.zip format. Simply unzip the file and set correct ownership and permissions. You are Done. You can do the upgrade by this method when the upgrade from admin panel gives any kind of errors.

In order to recover from a failed upgrade, you can keep a backup of the plugin directory (wp-content/plugins/plugin_name) before proceeding with the upgrade. You can use this directory if something goes wrong.

You can also use a plugin called WP Rollback to recover from a failed/incomplete upgrade. Works just like the plugin updater, except you’re rolling back (or forward) to a specific version. No need for manually downloading and FTPing the files or learning Subversion. This plugin takes care of the trouble for you.

I know dealing with WordPress issues you can run into many issues, but the greatest thing is that most of the issues are well documented. You can easily search on the net and get the fix easily. With experience, some issues can be fixed without any stress.

Have a great time!