Getting Notified of an Available Upgrade
After you install WordPress and log in for the first time, you can see the version number at the bottom-right corner of the WordPress Dashboard, as shown in Figure 6-1. Therefore, if anyone asks what version you're using, you know exactly where to look to find out.
Figure 6-1: WordPress version displayed in the Dashboard.
Say you have WordPress installed and you've been happily publishing content to your Web site with it for several weeks, maybe even months, then one day you log in to your Dashboard and see a message at the top of your screen you've never seen before that reads, “WordPress X.X.X is available! Please update now.” (Figure 6-2 shows the message and a small black circle, or notification bubble, on the left side of the page.)
Both the message at the top of the page and the notification bubble in the Dashboard menu are visual indicators that you're using an outdated version of WordPress and that you can (and need to) upgrade the software.
The message at the top of your Dashboard includes two links that you can click for more information. (Refer to Figure 6-2.) The first is a link called WordPress 3.0.1. Clicking this link takes you to the WordPress Codex page titled Version 3.0.1, which is filled with information about the version upgrade, including
- Installation/upgrade information
- Summary of the development cycle for this version
- List of files that have been revised
Figure 6-2: Dashboard notification of an available WordPress upgrade.
The second link, Please Update Now, takes you to another page in the WordPress Dashboard — the WordPress Updates page, as shown in Figure 6-3.
At the very top of the WordPress Updates page is another important message for you:
Important: before updating, please backup your database and files. For help with
updates, visit the Updating WordPress Codex page.
Both links in the message take you to pages in the WordPress Codex that contain helpful information on creating backups and updating WordPress.
Book II, Chapter 7 has extensive information on how to back up your WordPress Web site, content, and files.
The WordPress Updates page tells you that an update version of WordPress is available. You can update two ways:
- Automatically, by using the built-in WordPress updater
- Manually, by downloading the files and installing them on your server
These ways to update are discussed later in the chapter.
Figure 6-3: WordPress Updates page.
