This story has been verified in 2010 with the Joomla 1.5 CMS.

Most Content Management Systems (CMS) release patches with bug fixes. It is good practice to install these patches as soon as possible, especially when these bug fixes contain fixes for security issues. Below the steps are described to upload CMS patch archives with Direct Admin.

To install a CMS patch usually you just need to copy the files in the patch over the existing files of your website.

1. Check your websites to see if they are OK before you make a backup.
2. Log in to Direct Admin with your browser and browse to the backup section.
3. Click on the button to create a backup of your website(s).
4. Browse to the backup directory in the files section and download the backup as soon as it is ready.
5. Browse to the files section.
6. Go to a temporary directory, or create one.
7. Upload the patch: upload the .zip file or upload the .tar.gz file.
8. Click the link in column Action to extract the files from the patch.
9. Empty the clipboard by clicking the button in the page.
10. Select the extracted files, e.g. by clicking on the link in the column Select and then unselecting the original patch archive.
11. Add the files to the clipboard by clicking the button to add all selected files to the clipboard.
12. Browse to the public_html directory of the website you need to install the patch for.
13. Copy the contents of the clipboard by clicking the button, make sure you click the button for copying the files in the clipboard, and don't click the button for moving the files in the clipboard.
14. Repeat the last three steps for any other websites you want to patch.
15. Go back to the temporary directory and remove all files in the patch including the original patch archive.
16. Do any other steps for patching your website(s), such as testing if everything went ok. For example log in to the backend of your website to check the new version number of the CMS.
17. Go to the backup section again and create a new backup.
18. Browse to the backup directory in the files section and download the backup as soon as it is ready.

If anything goes wrong you can always restore your website using the backup you created in the first few steps. This backup can be restored by browsing to the backup section in Direct Admin, select which backup you want to restore and then click on the restore button.