As of Q4 2016, we are slowly transitioning all themes to use the same one-click installation to simplify and speed up the setup process. If you previously purchased one of our themes that’s since been upgraded, you may be wondering how to go about upgrading to the new version. We’ll try to make it as simple as possible for you, but first, a few very important notes & disclaimers:
- Check the theme’s changelog (via Product Support > Choose Your Theme > Changelog) to see specifically what was changed. If no changelog exists for your theme, there are no upgrades available. Otherwise, for most of our child themes, we’ve simply updated the installation process so if you’ve heavily customized your theme, there’s really no reason to upgrade an existing site to the new version. In some cases, we’ve changed a few images on the theme demo — which again — is not a good reason to upgrade.
- If you’ve made any changes to the child theme stylesheet or to any files contained within the child theme folder, they will be lost unless you first transfer those changes to the new child theme version.
- Before attempting an upgrade, be sure to backup your site just in case anything goes wrong and you need to revert back to the previous version. We are not responsible for and our support does not cover sites messed up because of upgrading!
If you wish to proceed with upgrading, here’s a couple methods for doing so:
- FTP/File Manager — the safest way to upgrade is to login to your site via FTP or your hosting providers file manager. First, you’ll want to rename the old version of the child theme to something else, like “child-theme-OLD”. This will allow you to keep the old version of the theme, just so you can quickly flip back to it in case the new version doesn’t work out for you. Once you’ve downloaded the new child theme version, unzip the download folder then unzip the main child theme .zip folder. Upload this folder to your ‘Themes’ directory and activate it.
- Delete & Replace — if you’re not comfortable with FTP or file manager, you can always just delete the current child theme and upload the new one, following the same instructions outlined here for installation. However, you likely won’t need to import the demo data, unless you just want to. Doing so may result in duplicate content, menu items, etc. which can be easily deleted.
Once you activate the new child theme, you may notice some/all of these changes:
- Depending on the child theme, you may be prompted to install additional plugins. All plugins are optional, just follow the on-screen prompts to install and activate them.
- If we’ve made any changes to the stylesheet or layout, your website layouts could look broken or unstyled. This is why we recommend checking the changelog before upgrading and weighing the pros/cons before deciding to upgrade.
- If upgrading Anthem or Josefin, please note that Page Builder Everywhere (PBE) has been updated to PBE 2.0. You can learn more about this plugin and it’s capabilities from the developer’s product description here. But here’s an article that will walk you through the changes and the new process for setting up your footer widgets.
As a rule of thumb, if you’re happy with your site the way it is, we recommend just leaving it alone and using the updated versions on new/future projects. In almost every case, these are simply style/layout/process changes, not security patches that must be fixed.