How to Undo All Changes on Sweetdate Child Theme and Start All Over Again
Changing your WordPress theme merely takes a few moments (if you overlook how long it takes to cull 1). Nevertheless, if y'all want to practice information technology safely, switching themes becomes more involved. After all, your active theme is so ingrained into your site's functionality that the change has the potential to break it.
Therefore, the process of changing themes without introducing any new issues can take a bit longer than simply clicking on the Activate push. Nonetheless, if you follow some basic procedures, you can ensure that your site works smoothly after the switch.
How to Alter a WordPress Theme (Without Breaking Your Website)
To successfully and safely change your WordPress theme follow these steps:
- Gear up up a staging copy of your website
- Install your new theme and preview it
- Activate your new theme
- Resolve errors and replace missing elements
- Push your staging website live
In this commodity, we're going to explain why changing WordPress themes is such a delicate procedure. Then we'll go over the five steps required to get the job done safely. Let's become to work!
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Why Changing WordPress Themes Is a Frail Process
Let'south take a quick expect at some of the most pop free WordPress themes yous tin can use on your site:
Even without diving into each of these individual pages, y'all can see that there are a lot of stylistic differences between each option. Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise that when you switch to a new theme, it ordinarily messes with your site'southward appearance and even its functionality.
The best-case scenario is that your new theme merely breaks a couple of elements, which you can easily supersede or revert to a previous condition. However, the more your theme is tied into your website's blueprint, the more likely it is that switching to a new one will have serious repercussions. This can include:
- Affecting some of your site's core features (i.e., messing with your navigation bar, contact forms, of import sections inside your pages, etc.)
- Disabling any shortcodes that were added in past your previous theme
- Removing any theme-specific widgets y'all have on your pages
- Interfering with your pages' schema data
As a rule of thumb, the more than circuitous the theme you're using is, the more than hard it will probable be to modify it. For example, if you're using a multipurpose theme with its own folio builder, you're probably in for a very lengthy transition.
That's not to say, of grade, that you should stay away from complex WordPress themes. Every website is different, so y'all should utilize whichever theme best suits your site's specific needs. Still, it's vital to know how yous can modify your theme safely, as problems can arise no thing what type of theme you're using now (or switching over to).
How to Change Your WordPress Theme Safely (In 5 Steps)
Before you do anything else, this is the perfect moment to create a full fill-in of your WordPress website. Ideally, you lot'll have enough of recent restore points already. Changing themes is a large bargain, even so, so you'll desire to be fully prepared in case yous need to revert for any reason.
Step 1: Set Up a Staging Copy of Your Website
You tin can recollect about a staging environment as a lab where you get to do all your testing and of import changes to your site earlier the public gets to come across any of it. With a staging copy of your website, you tin make any changes you want without fear. If you lot break something, y'all can easily start over without any repercussions.
These days, a lot of WordPress hosting platforms offer y'all staging functionality as a function of their packages. Here at Kinsta, for case, you lot can prepare a staging environment with just a couple of clicks:
Since changing WordPress themes is such a delicate process, information technology doesn't make sense to rush into it within your alive site. With WordPress staging, you'll exist able to see what happens to your content after you switch themes, set up whatsoever mistakes, and and so push the event alive when you're ready.
If your spider web host doesn't offer staging functionality, you take other options yous tin can effort. For example, you can set up a local WordPress environment, and create a copy of your website using ane of your backups.
This approach isn't quite every bit straightforward, because you can't deploy your local website online as easily as you can through your web host. In that case, you'd need to create some other copy of the site when you're done making changes and upload information technology to your server later.
If possible, we recommend using a web host that offers staging functionality. It tin can make your workflow much easier in a lot of situations, so it'southward a feature worth prioritizing.
Step 2: Install Your New Theme and Preview Information technology
At this point, your WordPress staging site should be upwards and ready to go. It'southward at present time to access it and install the new WordPress theme yous want to use.
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Before y'all activate the theme, nevertheless, caput to the Appearance > Customize section within your dashboard. At that place, you can make changes to your WordPress site's appearance. What'southward more, you tin can also use it to preview what your new theme will look like.
To do that, click on the Alter push button next to the Active theme section in the left-hand sidebar:
Then, select the theme yous want to test and click on the Alive Preview button under its name:
Subsequently, WordPress will brandish what your dwelling house page will look similar in one case yous activate the new theme. Have a moment now to become over your entire website within the Customizer, and make a note of any obvious problem areas or bugs.
If you observe whatever issues, you don't demand to worry near addressing them just yet. First, you'll need to activate the new theme on your staging site.
Footstep 3: Activate Your New Theme
You already know what your website will expect like one time yous switch themes, and so it'south time to get to piece of work. Shut the Customizer, and move to the Appearance > Themes tab. Then, click on the Activate button for your new theme:
WordPress may take a moment to process the change. Then, you lot'll meet that your new theme is activated and ready to get. Information technology'due south now live on your staging site, which means information technology'south time to ensure that everything is working properly.
Step 4: Resolve Errors and Replace Missing Elements
Depending on what features your last theme had, you'll probably need to do some tidying up at this betoken. In our experience, this is the pace that takes the longest amount of time. How intensive it ends up being volition wholly depend on how the switch afflicted your website.
As we mentioned before, changing themes often breaks parts of your site, including:
- Theme-specific widgets and shortcodes
- Your navigation bar and sidebar
- Specific sections within your pages, usually due to formatting issues or missing elements
- Your favicon could disappear.
Your content should all still be in identify, since switching themes won't affect that part of your site. What yous need to do at present is get to work on customizing your new WordPress theme, until your website looks just the manner yous want it to.
While you lot're at it, you'll also want to make sure that you're non missing any key functionality. If your new theme doesn't include some of the features your last one offered, y'all can always wait for plugins that will help you replace them.
If you've added schema markup to your pages (which you should!), remember that you'll also demand to configure your new theme to load it properly. Withal, if y'all're using a plugin arroyo to handle schema markup instead of adding the data manually, you should be able to skip that task.
Step 5: Button Your Staging Website Live
Once you make sure that your website is free of bugs and is looking but the way you want it to, it's time to make information technology public. If yous played it safe past using a staging website as we suggested, that means yous'll need to push your staging site live. In other words, you'll be replacing your existing live website with the new and improved staging copy.
If y'all're using your web host'south staging functionality, this process should exist unproblematic. Information technology oft only takes a couple of clicks to get the job done:
Keep in heed, though – if you've been publishing new content on your live website while tweaking your new theme on its staging re-create, that content will exist overwritten. So before you button your staging website alive, make certain you move all of the new content over to the staging site.
If y'all tested out your new theme on a local WordPress installation instead, this process will take a bit longer. Yous'll need to do a manual backup of your website, so upload information technology to your server. Information technology can be a bit of a hassle to exercise this, merely not well-nigh as much as dealing with a cleaved website if you decide not to use a staging copy.
When you're done, your alive site volition be ready to go with its new theme in place! It's a skillful idea to do one more pass of its important pages and content, to make actress certain that each element made the transition smoothly.
Summary
A theme is very important and about users tend to stick with the aforementioned WordPress theme for a long time. Picayune things, such as breadcrumbs and schema markup are things you lot don't want to forget about because they can drastically modify your site'southward UX and rankings if you all of a sudden change things effectually.
Information technology shouldn't come up as a surprise, therefore, that switching themes has the potential to wreak and so much havoc. If you want to play it condom when you're changing WordPress themes, I recommend that you lot follow these five steps:
- Set up a staging copy of your website
- Install your new theme and preview information technology
- Activate your new theme
- Resolve errors and supersede missing elements.
- Push your staging website alive
Do you have any questions about how to switch WordPress themes safely? Share them in the comments beneath!
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Source: https://kinsta.com/blog/change-wordpress-theme/
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