How to Manually Install and Update Free Plugins from WordPress.org

If you find that you are not able to update your free WordPress.org hosted plugin with the standard WordPress update features, this guide will help you do so manually.

This is an example of a WordPress.org timeout error:

In cases like this, you’ll need this guide to update your free plugins manually.

Step 1: Download the ZIP file from WordPress.org

The first step is to download the latest version of the free GiveWP plugin from WordPress.org.

Here is the GiveWP plugin page on WordPress.org

Once you are there, you’ll see a “Download” button towards the upper right of the page, below the plugin banner. Click on that to Download the latest version of GiveWP.

Now you should have a ZIP file in your Downloads folder for GiveWP. These files most often are formatted with the version number appended at the end of the filename; e.g. give.3.16.2.zip.

Step 2: Upload the ZIP file to your WordPress Website

Next you need to upload the ZIP file to your WordPress website. The WordPress plugin update system allows you to update a plugin simply by uploading the new ZIP file and it handles the update automatically.

To do this, navigate in your WordPress admin to “Plugins > Add New Plugin”. From there click on “Choose File”. That will open your computer’s file system for you to find the ZIP file you previously downloaded. Choose that and submit.

Once the file is fully uploaded, you should see a message that WordPress has detected that you already have this plugin installed. It will ask you whether you want to “Replace current with uploaded” or “Cancel and go back”. Click “Replace current with uploaded” to update your plugin.

The system will now update your plugin to the latest version. That’s it!