Having to upgrade your WordPress install every time a new version is released is necessary, but also very boring. If you have a SSH access to your server, here’s a very quick way to upgrade your WordPress install.

This is probably the most important step of this whole tutorial: always backup your WP Database and files. This tutorial have been tested, however I won’t be held responsible for any kind of data loss.

Once done, you can connect to your server by using SSH. On Mac and Linux platform you can use the Terminal, on Windows I recommend using Putty.

Get the latest WordPress version available:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Uncompress it:

tar xfz latest.tar.gz

Delete the wp-admin and wp-includes directories:

rm -rf ./wp-includes/
rm -rf ./wp-admin/

Go to the wordpress directory:

cd wordpress/

Now, it’s time to copy the downloaded files to your existing WP install, by overwriting old files:

cp -rpf -f * ../

Once done, come back to the WordPress directory and remove the downloaded files:

cd ..
rm -rf ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz

Visit your blog and upgrade the database (if needed). That’s all, your blog is now up to date and the whole process didn’t took more than a minute or two!

For more WordPress tips and tricks, you should definitely take a look at my blogs WpRecipes and Cats Who Code!