Hi redwhiteblueallover. Regardless of whether you decide to overwrite or not, you want to make sure that you have a backup of both your WordPress database and your WordPress files. You don’t always have to generate an entire backup when making small changes, but if you don’t have any backup for your WordPress site then now is a good time to do so.
To answer your question, you may want to take a different approach to updating your theme. Using WordPress’ Child themes is a great way to make changes to your WordPress theme without actually overwriting any of your theme’s files.
Brad, I really appreciate the response. I have just this minute finished copying content from my wordpress ftp onto my desktop. So, I’m now confident that I have a back up. Your advice with the Child Themes is good however, the theme has been created in a new WordPress blog by a hosting company. The main issue is that the hosting company refuses to migrate the content from the old WordPress site to the new one. This is why I’m trying to do it on my own. Some of the content file folders in the new FTP site have the same file name as those in the old FTP site. So, when transferring do I want to overwrite the new files with the old one.
I would have used something like Child Themes, but I needed a custom theme to match corporate marketing guidelines.
So, when transferring do I want to overwrite the new files with the old one.
If you are migrating a wordpress site, I recommend that you use the original working files to overwrite whatever files are currently there. The files could be of slightly different versions of WordPress, so you want to make sure that all of your files belong to the same version of WordPress.
I’ll start with the original files and see how it goes. I’ll chime back in in a few to let you know how it goes.
Some of the files wont paste from the desktop to the new WordPress FTP. I get error messages asking if I have permission.
Hi redwhiteblueallover. Word for word, what is the exact error message that you are receiving?
Hi Brad, I will send you over the message as soon as I can get it. Right now I have a content file copying that is very large and taking quite a while to finish. I don’t want to interupt it in case it stops transferring.
If you have a minute here is the website, optimumlighting.com
By the way you can call me Ted. It’s proboby easier than writing my username.
Thanks Brad.
By the way I clicked on your username. Do you work for a hosting company?
Here’s the error message. It occurs when transferring the “htpasswds” file folder from my desktop to the new WordPress FTP.
“An error occured when creating a folder on the ftp server. Make sure you have permission to put files on the server.
Details:
550 .htpasswds: File Exists”
Hi Ted. Yes! I actually work with InMotion Hosting.
“An error occured when creating a folder on the ftp server. Make sure you have permission to put files on the server.
Details:
550 .htpasswds: File Exists”
.htpasswds is used when you password protect a directory. It stores the usernames and passwords. So it sounds like you have a folder in your account that you have password protected?
Depending on your host and their PHP setup, it sounds like your ftp user does have access to update that file.
So before we dive in further, do you have a folder password protected on your site, or does the theme?
