Question about upgrading a Wordpress theme

[DaveTheRave]

Hi, I'm a Wordpress beginner. I have a self hosted blog using a free theme that was available at the time. I did a search and found that the author has a 2.0 version available for purchase. I'd like to buy and upgrade but worry about losing stuff on my blog.

My understanding is that I would upload the zip file into Wordpress. I think that would only make it available for me to then choose, along with whatever other themes are available to me.

So if I switch to the 2.0 version, my posts should be okay because they're stored in a different file, right? But what about my widgets? Will they be deleted? In my current theme there's no automatic upgrade button, so I worry that not everything will be upgraded correctly (Chateau theme) like my posts' featured images, etc or my banner picture, favicon. Am I worrying about nothing? Can anyone give me some advice?

Thanks!

 

[macjram]

Your posts will be safe from switching themes; and your widgets will be saved with the theme you have on now.

When you switch to the upgraded theme you may have to manually customize your widgets again but I believe there are options for you to put your old widgets into the sidebars of your new theme under the Widgets menu

Just don't overwrite your current theme with the new theme; use a different folder name for example

 

[waloshin]

Hi, I'm a Wordpress beginner. I have a self hosted blog using a free theme that was available at the time. I did a search and found that the author has a 2.0 version available for purchase. I'd like to buy and upgrade but worry about losing stuff on my blog.

My understanding is that I would upload the zip file into Wordpress. I think that would only make it available for me to then choose, along with whatever other themes are available to me.

So if I switch to the 2.0 version, my posts should be okay because they're stored in a different file, right? But what about my widgets? Will they be deleted? In my current theme there's no automatic upgrade button, so I worry that not everything will be upgraded correctly (Chateau theme) like my posts' featured images, etc or my banner picture, favicon. Am I worrying about nothing? Can anyone give me some advice?

Thanks!

Your posts and comments will stay intact. Sometimes your widgets will have to be placed back. Your favicon should be fine. Your banner image should be fine.

 

[miles01110]

Typically it doesn't even matter that it's a new version, because they're often titled with the version number.

Theme_v1_1
Theme_v2_0

You just install the new theme (which will not be automatically activated) and then manually activate the new theme from the Dashboard.

 

[glutenenvy]

Am I worrying about nothing? Can anyone give me some advice?

You shouldn't be worrying because you should be backing it up. WordPress is a popular platform so it is a popular platform to try to hack by the script kiddies.

BackWPup or similar plugin will allow you to backup everything, automatically.

After you have a backup, it will not matter if your old theme is overwritten on your website because you have it in a backup ready for you to re-upload if needed.

Since you stated you're upgrading the theme version and you want to keep the old one you could manually switch to a temporary theme, rename the theme directory you are updating and then install the update. If the updated theme directory is different then the old original name, rename the old one back to its original name.

 

[DaveTheRave]

Okay, I purchased the updated theme and installed it into Wordpress 3.3.1 with no problems. But when I switched over to the new theme, I noticed that I'd need to do some work to customize it the way my original theme looked (header image, link to privacy policy, getting the adsense ads in the right spot, etc). I see there's a few "theme switcher" plugins out there that would let me keep the current theme active but let me tweak/customize the new theme until its ready to become "live" on my site. Any advice on which plugin is the best for this? Thanks again!