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1. MaureenD
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   A few days ago I upgraded to WP 3.1.2, and also upgraded my WP e-commerce plugin to 3.8.3, and since then I've been spending countless hours putting my whole store back together since nearly everything broke.

   All the products (though there are only 45) came lost their categories and other issues had to be fixed and tweaked.

   I am using the dkret3 theme which I've customized a bit. It's been a few years since I originally built the store so I don't even remember half of the customizations I made, yet I do have everything backed up.

   Now WordPress is nagging me to update the theme. I'm currently on v3.3 of dkret3 and the new version is 4.5. I am noticing that several widgets with the theme no longer work like they should so I guess it would be best if I did the upgrade, but I'm really not looking forward to spending more sleepless nights fixing everything again.

   What is the least painful way to do this? Forgive me if this is a newbie type question but I don't want to take any chances. Is there some documentation or that will make it easier?

2. Andrew
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Well, if you update your theme, you're gonna lose all of your customizations. It is a good idea to upgrade the theme. i'd suggest rolling all of your customizations into a child theme. That way, the next time you upgrade, you won't lose your changes.

3. magitam
   Member
   Posted 12 months ago #

   Hey Maureen, I suggest copying everything that's in your theme right now, into a 'child' theme folder (Just copy it on the server, so that the folder is an exact copy, but with the necessary changes to the title, and the CSS file, so that WordPress recognises it as a 'child' theme.
   That way, when you hit that upgrade button, and the changes are all made, you can just switch it to the child theme.
   (If you really want to be safe, copy the theme to a different name/version number, and test it to make sure it works properly, as you need it to, on a backup version of your site, just to be doubly sure, then when you do upgrade, if it doesn't work immediately with the child theme, then you can switch to the backed up version of the theme that works, and gradually make changes/figure out what needs to be done, and slowly introduce those into the child theme, so that next time you upgrade, it should be relatively straight forward).
   Hope that helps! I'm going to be experiementing with Child Themes myself now, to make sure my site doesn't fall apart when I hit the update button, given I've gone and done some customisations myself, and like you have forgotten what I changed/when/where..

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