An updated version of Wordpress - back up database and files first

Hi, I am working on Flywheel local 2.2.4 and building a themed wordpress site. I have been notified there is a wordpress 4.9.6 available to update now. It says I should back up my database and files first. Do I need to do this? I thought Flywheel backup every night? I read that the wordpress plugins such as BakcupBuddy and Backupwordpress should not be used.

This is my first site so not sure what to do. I have a gut feeling I should backup before I do an update as I do not want to loose all my work. What is the best way to backup my Flywheel local before running the wordpress update. Can anyone help?

Hey @Janie18 –

Flywheel does make nightly backups for sites that are hosted on their servers, but since Local is on your local machine, we do not create automated backups there.

I would definitely recommend taking a backup of your Local sites every so often. You can do that quickly by right-clicking on the site in Local and selecting β€œExport”. Just save the zip file to somewhere safe and try the update.

If you need to restore the site, just drag and drop the zip file onto Local to re-import it.

If you have any other questions, just let me know!

– Ben

My site was developed with Wordpress 4.9.5. How do I use local and install 4.9.5 instead of 4.9.6?

Hey @billhuang –

There isn’t a way to downgrade WordPress from within Local. I would recommend at least trying to use the latest WordPress version, as well as developing the site in a way that is flexible enough to handle updates to WordPress core. This is because there are often security updates for those minor (ie, changes in the last number of the version) updates.

Still, you can use an older version of WordPress by downloading and overwriting the WordPress core files for the version you want. I think that the easiest way to do this is with the command line, so you would right click on the site, and β€œOpen Site SSH”.

From there you can type:

wp core version update --version='4.9.5' --force

Put whatever version you need within the single quote and wp-cli will download and make the changes necessary for the older version of core.

– Ben

1 Like

I get this error when trying this -can you please check the syntax:

root@8ada41f62760:/# wp core version update --version=β€˜4.9.9’
Error: Too many positional arguments: update

wp core update --version=β€˜4.9.5’ --force

2 Likes

Whoops – sorry about that typo @afouquet !

Thanks for the correct command @afragen !