Theme updates are becoming a problem especially if there are customization made to certain files.
From what I understand the last theme update – updated Visual Composer, however multiple files reverted any changes I made to them.
How do I go about updating the theme without losing my changes. This is frustrating and I do not recall at all having these issues with other themes.
It it not feasible to have to redo all the custom coding again and not updating the files doesn’t seem like an option because there could be important changes that I could be missing by excluding them from the update.
How can I update the theme without losing my changes?
Due to all the security changes this year in WP, which are ongoing (Akismet identified this week as major security issue, allowing commenters to hack your site!), the best plan is this:
a) make changes to the core theme files (not child theme)
b) keep track of changes made, files, line number, code snippets changed where
c) to update, download new theme version, apply your mods to same files, replace old theme folder with the new version with your replicated mods;
d) if something fails, go back to the backup
Not much TagDiv or anybody can do about ongoing security patches to the Visual Composer plugin — TagDiv doesn’t make that, nor do the theme devs around the world bundling that as groovy cool way to do page layouts.
Sadly, WordPress and all the pieces which fit together have been going through major upheaval this year — and it’s good for security, but seriously you have to get annoyed when the anti-spam tool causes your site to be hacked from comments containing “emojis” which you can’t disable in WP without adding code to the functions.php file. Sheesh.
Anyway– just some feedback. Wasn’t trying to annoy or shoot you down, just some feedback that it’s not just you; WP has been a pain in the arse this year.
I’m counting something like 100+ updates since Spring on some of our sites for WP, Akismet, Yoast, Visual Composer, etc., due to security vulnerabilities. Wild.
Chris,
Thanks for your feedback.
With all the updates how does your team or you handle constantly having to reapply customization, especially if there are major ones.
Chris,
To add —
I know you don’t agree – But I think this is where a child theme would help. Instead of reapplying customizations to several files, one would only need to make changes to the files that were updated.
In this current update none of my modified files were updated so a child theme would save me from having to redo everything. I guess I could just FTP a back up of the 10 or so files that weren’t updated.
Is this advisable? I want to make sure things don’t get out of wack.
Yes, except with major WP core and structural changes, this means some things change in the child themes, too.
Also I’m an SEO nut going on 20 years now, so technically a child theme is a CSS redirect every page load, which isn’t a great idea … e.g., load CSS file, but wait, please redirect to the REAL css file now ? Google specifically recommends not doing that.
I usually look at the changelog to see WHAT files change — if it’s just some basic stuff, I can replace those couple of files and be done. For MAJOR upgrades they often have changes to child theme, too.
Been caught by that .. upshot – up to you. I just find it safer to work off main files, and this also removes some gremlins I run into with mod_pagespeed, caching, blah blah.
Having two sets of files in theme folder annoying to me. 🙂
Hi
@elvinf if you decide to use the child theme your customization won’t be lost when you update the theme to a newer version but this doesn’t mean that all changes will work fine with the new update. You have to check if the customizations from child theme are compatible with the theme update and eventually adjust them properly. Checking the change log is the easiest way to see if the files you modified are on the updated list, so this way you will know which files you need to verify.
Hope this help!
Thanks!
