Knowledge base article

Manually re-install WordPress

This article will walk you through manually updating WordPress via the command line

Please note that this article is advising the steps for Mac/Linux users. Remember it is always a good practice to backup your website files prior to any updates, please complete this step now if you have not already done so.

  1. Open Terminal (or a SSH client like Putty if you're on Windows) and SSH onto your hosting server. If you are unaware of your SSH details, please reference the original Welcome to Serversaurus email which includes all relevant SSH details (note, your SSH details are the same as your cPanel credentials) or alternatively find out how to update your FTP/cPanel credentials.
    In Terminal replace the username and server info with your own:

    ssh user@yourserver.serversaurus.com.au
  2. Press Enter and type your password when prompted. Note: when you are logged in, by default you will be in your home directory, which contains sub directories for your website, email, web stats, and add-on domains.
  3. Using the wget command, we will download the latest WordPress version into our current directory.
    wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
  4. Now to extract the contents of the latest.tar.gz file type the command:

    tar xfz latest.tar.gz
  5. Change into the directory where your current WordPress site is installed.
    Note: This can differ depending on your setup, if these updates are for your primary website WordPress will most likely be installed under public_html.
    To change into your public_html directory type and enter:

    cd public_html

    If you are reinstalling WordPress under an addon domain, navigate to the addon domain's home directory using the below command:

    cd yourdomainname.com
  6. Now we want to copy the files/directories which are unique to your website and move them into the directory with your fresh WordPress install overwriting default directories or files that were included in the installation.
  7. Use the below command to recursively copy your unique website files:
    cp -r wp-content/ wp-config.php .htaccess ~/wordpress
  8. Next we'll remove the existing WordPress installation from the current directory
    rm -fr ./*
  9. The final step is to move the new WordPress files with your content into the current directory.
    mv ~/wordpress/* .
  10. Now let's tidy up after ourselves, we no longer need the WordPress directory or the latest.tar.gz file, to remove these items, issue the following command:
    rm -r ~/latest.tar.gz ~/wordpress/

Last updated November 30, 2023

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