This blog post is mostly a reminder to myself on how to update phpMyAdmin (and WordPress) the next time I need to do that. It turns out that updating is quite simple and mostly involves copying a few files:

1. Download and unzip the new version of phpMyAdmin.
2. Copy or move the unzipped folder with the new phpMyAdmin version next to the old phpMyAdmin folder (might be located under xampp).
3. Copy config.inc.php from the old folder to the new one.
4. Rename the old phpMyAdmin folder to e.g. phpMyAdmin<old version number> in case it is ever needed again.
5. Rename the new directory to phpMyAdmin (from e.g. phpMyAdmin-4.5.3.1-all-languages).

I found (approximately) these instructions here: https://www.ostraining.com/blog/coding/update-phpmyadmin/

As a bonus, here is how to update WordPress:

1. Temporarily set the variable max_execution_time in xampp\php\php.ini to a sufficiently large value, maybe 240 (seconds).
2. Click on the update link on the WordPress dashboard
3. Hopefully it does not time out. If it does, increase max_execution_time further.
4. Set max_execution_time in php.ini back to the normal value (maybe 30).