19 May 2020

How to update your existing theme.

By Philomathes in WordPress

You can update your WordPress theme, follow these three steps.

  1. Backup (from cPanel or FTP )
  2. Check for compatibility (of all plugins and themes)
  3. Upgrading WordPress Themes Manually or FTP

Backup (from cPanel)

Anything can happen on your website, whether it is hard drive crash, hacking attempts, human errors, and more.
In those instances corrupted files or even worse data loss can occur. The time that must be used to grow your business is allocated to recover those files.
This is why you need to back up your website regularly. If one of those cases happens, you cannot avoid permanent data loss by restoring your website files.

Backing up your cPanel account, you can easily get this task done.

Depending on your specific requirements, you can either do a full or partial back-up of your website.

Follow these steps to do a full back-up –

  • Log in to your cPanel.

How to update your existing theme.

  • In the Files section, click on the Backup Wizard icon.
  • On the Backup screen, click the Backup button.
  • Click the Full Backup button.
  • Select the Backup Destination.
  • Click the Generate Backup button.

Backup WordPress with FTP

The UpdraftPlus plugin includes tools to backup your site to a remote storage location. As we have continued our series on the Update UpdraftPlus plugin for WordPress, we will now show you how to backup WordPress with FTP. FTP allows you to transfer your backups to another server, which is ideal in case of your website’s server issues and you need to restore your site from backup.

Check for compatibility (of all plugins and themes)

The plugin PHP Compatibility Checker is a third party tool and not owned by One.com. It can be helpful to verify that your site is compatible with the latest PHP version, but if you have any issues or questions regarding its use, we refer you to the plugin developer team. Our support cannot help you with this.

  1. Go to Plugins in your WordPress Admin.
  2. Click Add plugin at the top of the screen.
  3. Search for PHP Compatibility Checker in the search field to the right.
  4. Install the plugin; it gets activated right away.

Upgrading WordPress Themes Manually

Note, if you are running a customized theme you will lose any customizations if you simply overwrite your theme with a new one. In this case you will need to work with a developer to integrate your customizations into your new WordPress theme instead of just overwriting the old theme. If you have not customized your theme’s code and have merely customized it using the web admin interface that WordPress provides (without changing any of it’s files), then you can follow the procedure below:

  1. First create a backup of your WordPress site.
  2. Download a ZIP file of the theme you plan to upgrade.
  3. Unzip the theme files onto your local machine.
  4. Use sFTP to delete your existing theme directory from the wp-content/themes/ directory.
  5. Replace the deleted directory by uploading the unzipped theme into your wp-content/themes/ directory. You should now have a structure that looks something like wp-content/themes/theme-name/
  6. Sign into your WordPress site. Go to Appearance > Themes and verify you are running the newest version of your theme.

Update wordpress theme with FTP

You can update the WordPress theme to its latest version via FTP. This is required for some premium and custom themes that cannot be updated in WordPress. You must download the files of your subject to your local computer before starting this process.

  1. Connect to your hosting with FTP.
  2. Navigate to the / wp-content / themes folder for your WordPress site.
  3. Upload your theme in this folder.
  4. If your subject is zipped, you must unzip it. (Web hosting / cPanel / Plesk)
  5. Note: If you do not have a way to unzip the file on your hosting account, you must unzip the file on your local computer, and then upload the unzipped folder of files.
  6. If your theme has a custom stylesheet, also known as a child theme, repeat the process for the same.

Conclusion

As you can see this is an easy process. We strongly advise you to try to enable upgrades via the WordPress web interface if at all possible. This may mean you have to set less restrictive file ownership and permissions on your WordPress installation. The downside is that your web server will have rights to modify your files – which may allow a hacker to do the same. But the benefit is significant in that you can patch security vulnerabilities via the web interface through upgrades.

If your theme is paid one, you will automatically get update notification in your dashboard once an update is available!

About Philomathes Jigyasu

Philomathes (pronounced as fillo-MAY-thus) is a fictional character at VAYUZ (https://www.vayuz.com), who is on a never ending journey called “LEARNING”. In a way, Philomathes embodies VAYUZ - Way of life, which is if you are not learning then you are not breathing. The word Philomathes, comes from the Greek roots philo and philein meaning "to love" and the Greek roots mathos (MAH-thos) and mathesis (muh-THAYSIS) meaning “learning”.Philomathes through his Blogs and Vlogs (Video Blogs) will share his experience, learnings and thoughts. In his tryst to learn and understand, he would also seek answers to questions. So if you would like to join him in this incredible journey called “ life” then feel free to write to him on philomathes.jigyasu@vayuz.com.Always remember, knowledge is all around us, we just need to keep our guards down and senses on.

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