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Can you please help me recover the hours of work that went into my website? I updated my site this morning (both in terms of the WordPress update & the Focus theme update) and I’ve lost everything. Is there any way to revert, whether from a backup on my hard-drive or through what’s stored online? (The media files still seem to be available through the Media library).
Hi Tonsure
Sorry to hear you ran into trouble.
Your best bet would be to chat to your hosting company and see if they have a backup you can use. Many hosts make a daily backup and keep it for seven days. If you don’t have any backups yourself then this is the only possible route to recovery.
When can perhaps help out further if you provide details as to what happened after updating. When you say you lost everything, do you still have access to your WordPress admin? Please provide as much detail as possible as to what you’re seeing. We’ll do our best to advise from there.
Thanks so much for the quick reply. Here’s the best I can do, in terms of providing details.
1. I hadn’t downloaded any updates to the website in over a year. Neither for WordPress nor for the Focus theme that I originally purchased back in April 2014 (when it was called ” Focus – Fully Responsive Portfolio Theme by FutureBuilding”).
2. My website was a one-pager, and I’d done most of the styling using the “Theme Settings” in the “Appearance” section of the WordPress sidebar. (A friend had tweaked some of the code as well, for further customization).
3. This morning, I decided to install the updates for both WordPress (which appears to be 4.2.2) and for the Focus theme (I can’t tell which update this was). After updating both, I visited the website (http://www.paperbooks.ca) and was shocked to find that the site had reverted to a basic default page (which simply lists the title of my website “Paper Muse” on the top-left of the screen and then “Homepage” in the middle, with “leave a reply” section filling the majority of the screen. This is what I mean when I say that I’ve lost the website.
4. I went into the Plugins section and de-activated all plugins. Nothing changed.
5. When I look in the WordPress Media Library, I see that all of my original image files are still uploaded. But, when I look at the Theme Settings, it seems like the “update” to the Focus theme actually wasn’t an “update” at all—but an installation of a totally new theme. (And, after looking at the SiteOrigin demo for “Focus,” it seems like it doesn’t resemble my old “Focus” theme, but Future Building, very much at all).
6. Here’s my real concern. I know that there’s a (not too old) backup of my site on my hard-drive and also that my hosting company also likely has something. However, given that the Focus theme seems to have fundamentally changed—I’m worried that I won’t be able to revert to the old website content without also reverting back to the old theme. Is that even possible?
That’s all I can think of. (Apologies, I’m quite a novice when it comes to WordPress management). I’d be happy to answer any other questions with as much detail as possible.
Thanks for your help; this is really hard to deal with (since I finally got the website to the point that I was happy last night).
Just as an addendum to the previous message. If I could revert to the old Focus theme, I’m pretty sure I could recreate my website without too much problem (i.e. I have all the files, and remember most of the text / structure). However, looking at the current theme customization options, it seems like it would be impossible to recreate the website with the current version of the Focus theme. Am I totally off-base here?
I’m afraid Focus – Fully Responsive Portfolio Theme by FutureBuilding isn’t our theme. Our theme, also called Focus can be seen here: https://siteorigin.com/theme/focus/.
Perhaps yours was originally one of these themes:
http://themeforest.net/search?category=wordpress&term=focus&utf8=%E2%9C%93
SiteOrigin Focus is distributed on the WordPress.org theme directory. WordPress.org automatically offers theme updates to all users. Unfortunately, this system is vulnerable to name confusion. In the case of theme authors not operating on the WordPress.org directory, it’s up to them to disable automatic updates from WordPress.org OR take other steps to prevent this happening. Our market is entirely focussed on WordPress.org so when we check for a theme name being taken we only check on .org.
Summary: You’re now using the wrong theme. To recover. Login to ThemeForest if that’s where you bought your theme. Locate the latest download for your theme. Download. Unzip. Locate the theme install ZIP ONLY and install from Appearance > Themes > Add New: Upload Theme.
Before doing the above you must switch to any other theme.
Hover over Focus by SiteOrigin.
Delete it.
Thise will most likely sort everything out. Good luck.
Thanks so much Andrew. I had a feeling you were going to say what you did. My concern right now is that it looks like the design company that originally offered my Focus theme has become defunct. There’s no sign of them on ThemeForest. When I click on the “download” link from my original email from ThemeForest, it’s clear that this theme has been removed. If that’s indeed the case, can you think of any other way to restore my original theme? Could it be on my hard-drive somewhere? Thanks again for your help, I realize that this issue has nothing to do with SiteOrigin, but is instead a terrible coincidence accident..
Thanks for your understanding.
It’s possible you still have the original ZIP download in your computer’s download folder. Try searching.
Have you tried logging into ThemeForest and checking your downloads page?
Yeah, the downloads page says that the files aren’t available any longer. Good news, however, is that I’ve found a folder on my hard-drive (actually, a few of them), that relates to my original Focus theme. Of course, I have no idea what to do with them. Is there any chance that you could provide a really quick tutorial? Or is this a bit more complicated than that?
You’re after a single ZIP file. Usually ThemeForest downloads have a main folder, inside that main folder is documentation, licenses etc. One of the items in the main folder is usually another ZIP file. That ZIP is what we need to install from Appearance > Themes > Add New: Upload Theme.
You must delete Focus before installing the new Focus.
I’ve installed the original theme (which was on my hard drive, luckily). There seems to be something wrong, however, in terms of the way in which the back-end and front-end are communicating. (My theme options all seem to be saved, but the appearance of the website doesn’t match at all). Perhaps I’ll ask you one more question, if you’ll indulge me: If I restore an earlier version of my SQL database, should that get me to where I was? Or should I just try to redesign the site from scratch, using the editor?
Hard to say, there could be a number of challenges relating from the new version of WordPress and new plugin versions.
Try:
1. De-activate all plugins.
2. Test.
3. If things resolve activate your plugins one by one while running a test each time.
This will let you know if you have a plugin conflict.
The site doesn’t load for me right now, just a spinning loader. That might be a plugin conflict issue. Hard to say.
Restoring a SQL backup could be the way to go if you have it. The problem with that is you’ll ideally need to downgrade WordPress to match.
I’m afraid do a high support load on our side I have to move on now. If you decide at some point you’d like a professional hand in restoring we recommend the team over at https://codeable.io.
Good luck! Hope you’re able to restore.
I’ve installed the original theme (which was on my hard drive, luckily). There seems to be something wrong, however, in terms of the way in which the back-end and front-end are communicating. (My theme options all seem to be saved, but the appearance of the website doesn’t match at all). Perhaps I’ll ask you one more question, if you’ll indulge me: If I restore an earlier version of my SQL database, should that get me to where I was? Or should I just try to redesign the site from scratch, using the editor?
Hi R
Please, open a new thread: Page: New Thread. Thanks.