AppThemes Vantage and SiteOrigin Vantage

In a case of mistaken identity, WordPress has been updating users of AppThemes’ Vantage to SiteOrigin’s Vantage. This is a very unfortunate side effect of how the WordPress updates system works.

First, let’s take a look at how the WordPress updates system works. WordPress uses the theme slug as the identifier for a theme. A theme slug essentially a theme’s folder name. Because both our theme and AppThemes’ theme share a theme slug, WordPress mistakenly assumes they’re the same theme and tries to update both of them from the WordPress.org directory.

Solutions

There are several solutions to this problem. Unfortunately, we can’t implement any from our side. They all involve changes that need to be made outside Vantage because our theme isn’t controlling the update process. Contact AppThemes support if you have any more questions.

Solution 1 – Change the version number

If you’re using AppTheme’s Vantage, you can edit the style.css to change the version number. If you open up style.css in the Vantage folder, right at the top you’ll see the theme information. These is a line that starts with Version: …

Changing this version number to 2.0 will instantly stop Vantage from updating to our version hosted on the WordPress directory. We have assured AppThemes that we’ll be keeping our version to below 2.0.

Solution 2 – Rename the folder

If you log into your site’s FTP and navigate to wp-content/themes/ you’ll see a folder called vantage. Renaming this to appthemes-vantage will also stop your theme from updating to our version.

In fact, in the future we’re planning on prefixing all our theme names with siteorigin to ensure that there’s never a case of mistaken identity again.

Solution 3 – Intercept update requests

This solution would be best if it were inserted into the actual theme itself. WordPress gives you a way of changing where it checks for theme updates. This code would allow a theme like AppTheme’s Vantage to check their own servers for updates, instead of the WordPress directory.

There’s a very easy to use library on Github that you can use for this.

Why We Chose The Name Vantage

We operate on the WordPress.org directory, which means that we’re only required to check the directory for a unique name. At the time we created Vantage, the name was available on the WordPress directory, and we went with it. I’ll admit, it was a mistake not checking other sources for themes with similar names, but I didn’t foresee this being a problem. It’s not entirely uncommon for themes to share names – especially fairly generic one-word names.

We didn’t choose this name for any other reason than we liked it, and it suited the design and feel we were aiming for. It was never our intention to hijack another theme developer’s users. This behavior has caused a lot of issues for both users and us, but, unfortunately, there’s no way for us to change our theme’s name on the WordPress directory at this stage.

We will continue working with AppThemes to get this situation resolved. Any one of the three solutions we’ve posted will instantly fix the issue. We’re hoping one of them will work. Our apologies to everyone in the AppThemes community. We at SiteOrigin are here to help in any way possible.