How to Update Drupal Manually

There are many ways to update Drupal – manually, automatically, with Drush, or with Composer. Below we cover how to update Drupal manually:

• Backup Your Drupal Files
• Replace Drupal Core Files
  • SSH
  • File Manager
• Finalize Drupal Updates

Backup Your Drupal Files

1. Backup Drupal with a module or backup cPanel
2. Login to Drupal as an administrator
3. Enable Maintenance Mode

Replace Drupal Core Files

There are two ways to download and remove Drupal core files:

• SSH requires comfort in the command line interface (CLI) and attention to detail, but it’s faster because you can copy commands from the article.
• cPanel and FTP are more user-friendly (and harder to make mistakes) but takes longer.

SSH

1. Log into SSH
2. Navigate to your Drupal root directory
3. Delete the core and vendor directories: rm -rf core vendor
4. Remove all files (not other directories) in the directory: rm -f *.* .[a-z]*
5. Visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal and click the download link for the latest Drupal core version
6. Download the core file: wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-[version-number].tar.gz
   

   Copy the download link to get the full file path

7. Install the archive: tar zxf drupal-[version-number].tar.gz
8. cd into the new directory with the same name as the extracted archive: cd drupal-[version-number]
9. Copy the core and vendor directories into your Drupal root directory: cp -R core vendor ../
10. Copy all of the files (not other directories) into your Drupal root directory: cp *.* .[a-z]* ../
11. (Optional) Make needed changes to your .htaccess, composer.json, and robots.txt

cPanel File Manager or FTP

1. Log into Panel File Manager or FTP
2. Navigate to your Drupal root directory
3. Delete the core and vendor directories and all files (including hidden files) in the directory
4. Visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal and click the download link for the latest Drupal core version
5. Download the core file
6. Upload the file to your server
7. Extract the file
8. Enter the new directory with the same name as the extracted archive
9. Copy the core and vendor directories and all files (including hidden files but not other directories) into your Drupal root directory
10. (Optional) Make needed changes to your .htaccess, composer.json, and robots.txt

Run The Drupal Update

1. Visit [your-domain.com]/update.php
2. Click Continue at the bottom
3. Click Apply pending updates
4. Click site or administration pages to log into Drupal
5. Check the Status Report for any errors
6. Disable maintenance mode when ready
7. Remove the downloaded archive file and the folder of the same name

Stay up to date on available updates by configuring the Drupal Update Manager Settings.