WordPress 5.0 has officially launched today. Don’t get too excited though this is the biggest change in the WordPress history. Because, there is a big possibility that the update might break your site. We highly suggest you to take the 4 steps below before updating to WordPress 5.0.
1. Back Up before you perform any updates
No matter a minor or major update, always remember to have a latest backup for your site. If any issues occurred, you can always restore it when necessary.
Just follow the tutorial below and you can create a full manual backup very easily with Plesk.
2. Create a staging environment
After the backup, you should create a staging site which enable you to duplicate a copy of your live site for testing purpose without going live. Create a staging site is not that complicated with Plesk, and you can do it in a few clicks.
3. Update core, theme and plugins in staging environment
After you have a staging site ready, just update your core, themes and plugins there as it will not affect your main site. After updating to WordPress 5.0, check carefully if there are any error occurred in both back or front end and fix them if necessary.
4. Apply changes to live site (production site)
If everything is fine, you can apply the changes from this staging site to your live site.
On the other hand, Plesk provides another way to update and restore your site safely in one click. You can use the restore point to roll back the update if something goes wrong. Do note that you are not able create restore point when you update multiple websites at once. Just follow the steps in the tutorial video and you are good to go.
