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My brother, thinking he was helping, just updated my theme (vantage). My entire website has been destroyed as a result. All visual elements that i had tweaked and changed, plugins i was using to display my posts, font changes, colour changes, everything is gone!!! Could you please advise on how this can be undone?!? I have just lost months of work!
Hi Briana – ouch!
First thing to check is whether your webhost does automatic backups of your WordPress install. Some do, so it is worth checking. If so, you could do a restore from that. Your host will be able to help you with that.
Have you installed any backup plugins? There are plenty of these and you should be able to restore through one of these if you have.
Unfortunately, without a backup, I’m not aware of any quick and easy ways to restore your site.
It is important to create a child theme for any changes you want to want to the settings of a theme. It is really easy to do: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes . this won’t restore your site now, but once you have it up and running again it would be worth checking out.
Having said all of that, an update to your theme is very unlikely not cause your plugins to break, so maybe you’ve done more than just updating your theme?
Good luck sorting it out.
I also just updated to the latest version of Vantage Premium and after the upgrade all of the content in text widgets on the home page is gone.
Hi Stacey
This sounds like a separate issue. If you start a new thread, we’ll be able to help you there.
Hi Briana
Very sorry to hear about this.
As Daryl pointed out, we do strongly recommend that if you make any changes to a theme, that you do so using child themes so that any changes you made are not overwritten when you update.
The WordPress updates system does delete the old theme folder before installing the update, so code changes will be lost. It’s very likely that, if you’re using a good web host, they’ll have a backup for you. The sooner you ask them, the better.
Please let us know what they say.
Thanks for your feedback. I have restored the sections of the website that reverted. It seemed that my primary posts page, and any page that i edited the style.css for were affected. I have advised my brother not to update anything in the future without making a backup and utilising a child theme.
Hi Briana
Glad to hear you managed to make a recovery.
Duplicator is a great plugin to use for backups: https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/.
But as you mentioned, moving forward, all your customisations at a code level need to be housed in a child theme.
All the best.
Hi there,
I have customized the Vantage premium theme in the CSS without using a child theme (I know, I know – bad planning). However, my question is this, do I really need to update the theme at all? I have done the site for a client, it’s live and I really don’t want to go “back in there” if you follow? Will the site fall apart in the future if left updated? I’m thinking no, but I would really like a definitive answer.
Many thanks and it’s a great theme!
Bryan
Hi again,
Before you even get to answer the above question I’m back with more. :)
1. Can I simply create a Child Theme and copy&paste the entire style.css (that I modified in the editor) into it? My thinking that this might overwrite the customized parent that will lose changes when updated?
2. What about changes I have made (again in Editor) to demo.php?
Thanks,
Bryan
Hi Bryan
It’s a pretty vulnerable position to leave the site in. You could leave it if the client doesn’t have an admin account, that way you’d be the only one that could access Dashboard > Updates or Appearance > Themes. If the client has an admin account it’s really easy to overwrite your changes through running an update.
1. You’d need to try that out. It should work but there would be a small load time implication.
2. Any changes to made to any files would be lost in a theme update. The same applies to demo.php.
If you do want to create a child theme, https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/ is an app you can use to find changes.
For further assistance please open a new support thread.
Hi again,
This morning I planned to re-build a site, but this time using a child theme, so as to avoid the vulnerabilities as Andrew outlined above. However, I cannot login to the admin panel. I have tried all manner of means to do so – FTP to the folders and disabling the Vantage Premium theme, plugins etc. I still get a kind of 404 message using the theme saying “That page can’t be found.” or there is a re-direct loop. I have not touched anything on the dashboard since I was last in there. Could this be a theme issue (as I didn’t use a child theme to begin with)?
The site is at http://www.balletandoperaireland.com/.
Many thanks,
Bryan
Hi Bryan
I think we might need a new thread topic here. But perhaps try logging in via ftp and renaming your .htaccess file. Just put an underscore in front of the name so that you can restore it if needs be. Then re-test. I haven’t dealt with this problem yet but it sounds like it could be some kind of htaccess issue.
Please open a new thread following that and we’ll do what we can to assist;
https://siteorigin.com/new-thread/
HI Andrew!
I have opened the thread here: https://siteorigin.com/thread/cannot-log-onto-wp-admin-dashboard-not-a-wp-problem/
Thanks,
Bryan
Thanks, we’ll pick that up ASAP.