I see the posts about Child Themes. I saw them a little late. I have been making changes on this theme for over 6 months.
What is the process for ensuring an update to the theme won’t kill all the work I have done? Will all the settings be kept?
I am running Vantage Premium theme 2.2 and trying to update to the 2.4.2
I am sure I have updated the .css file, added “Custom CSS” to the site, and modified every setting. I don’t want to (can’t) do that all over.
Any help?
Hi Newberry94005
Thanks for reaching out.
1. Login to your server and backup your theme folder ASAP. /wp-content/themes/vantage, backup the ‘vantage’ folder and keep it somewhere safe.
2. If it was only style.css that you edited then that’s the only file we need to worry about.
Download https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/.
Download the original style.css file: https://themes.svn.wordpress.org/vantage/1.2/style.css
Compare everything from the Reset heading down. Don’t worry about the heading saying Vantage vs Vantage Premium.
Each CSS rule that you’ve changed needs to be copied to Appearance > Custom CSS or style.css in your child theme.
3. Here is a stater child theme to get started with. You only need this if you want to use style.css in the child theme. You can also just make use of Appearance > Custom CSS.
If you’ve edited files other than style.css then you do need a child theme as the edited files need to go into the child theme.
https://siteorigin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/vantage-child-starter.zip
4. Once all edits are safe in Custom CSS or the child theme you’re good to upgrade.
To confirm, we only care about files edited at a code level, everything else is in the database and update safe.