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I am working on a Vantage site which has not had the theme updated since its build in 2014. I have updated wordpress to the latest version and all the active plugins. It is now saying “WordPress has detected that your site is running on an insecure version of PHP.” So, I need to update the Theme. However, the original developer has built the site on the theme rather than of a child of the theme, so I am worried about things becoming broken when I update the Theme. Has anyone else had a similar experience and a solution?
Hi Aleida
Thanks for reaching out.
The PHP warning mentioned refers to the version of PHP running on your server, you’d need to update that from your hosting control panel or by contacting your hosts.
Vantage Premium has been discontinued but the version of Vantage hosted on WordPress.org is still regularly updated. However, if your theme is customized, please don’t update it ever without first migrating all of the code level changes to a child theme.
Hope that helps :)
Thanks so much Andrew. That is really helpful. I am rebuilding many of the site's pages in Site Origins and changing the main menu quite a bit. Will updating PHP affect this? We are trying to get hold of the original developer to find out if they modified the theme files. If they haven't, do you think that I would be safe to update the Vantage theme to the latest version?
Thanks again.
Sure :) Updating PHP won’t impact the theme. Sure, if no changes have been made to the theme at a code level, you can switch to another theme, delete Vantage and install the version hosted on WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/themes/vantage/.
Hi Andrew,
The original developer has confirmed that he doesn’t remember making any theme modifications, but if he did it would have been minimal.
What are the advantages of doing this: ‘you can switch to another theme, delete Vantage and install the version hosted on WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/themes/vantage/.’ And if yes, is this something that I could do easily as a novice?
I’m thinking that as I am making so many changes that it may be easier to build it again from scratch. If yes, would you recommend that we build on a child theme instead of directly onto Vantage theme?
Thanks.
By the way, we are currently on VantageVersion: 1.3.4 (new version 1.10.01). Does this support the PHP update from 5.4 to 7.2?
Hi :)
There aren’t any PHP 7+ issues that I’m aware of with any of the versions of Vantage.
If you’re using Vantage 1.3.4 then you’re already using the version hosted on WordPress.org, there should be an update pending at DashboardUpdates.
If you start from scratch, yes, it’s easier to work from a child theme in the beginning in case you need it later. Here is a starter child theme for Vantage: Page: Child Theme
Thanks,
last question, I hope! Can I add a child theme now and transfer the files across instead of starting from scratch?
Aleida
Sure, you can add a child theme now but you’d need to migrate your Customizer options, here is how.
(If you’re code level migrating changes from the parent to the child, you’d need to know what code changes were made. This is a technical task.)