Well, lesson learned, again!

Last night I decided to update my WordPress Theme (iFeature by CyberChimps). It is a stable theme, works well, and has a useful settings panel. However, my WP Dashboard dutifully informed me that there is a new update to this theme. Danger, danger!

Learning from past mistakes, before updating this theme, I did the following:

1. I first made a copy of the ENTIRE theme folder.
2. I placed this copy outside of the WP-Contents folder.
3. I gave it a new name: iFeature-V-2.0.4.,
4. So, now that I backed up my existing theme, I am not quite ready to update the theme. I copy/pasted the main iFeature settings into a document, in this case an Apple Pages document.
5. Now that I had a complete backup of the theme (not the postings, BTW – that is done by backing up the database), I can update the iFeature theme to version 3.0.4.
6. After updating the theme, I made sure my settings were not lost. Of course, many were so I used my Pages document to update my initial settings.
7. I discovered a problem! No surprise there. The new theme version uses a different CSS set of files. All the styles are there still but in different files. Finding the styles was a major pain.
8. After some archeological digging, I found all the necessary styles, updating them using the CSS styles.css file I had saved from the theme backup.
9. Then, with trepidation and breath-holding, I reloaded my site.
10. POOF! My site was a mess. Seems the reworking of the styles on the new version was much more intense than I had noticed.
11. Seeing it was 11 p.m. I was not about to try to figure this out. So, what to do?
12. I deleted the iFeature theme from the themes directory and copied my backup theme into the themes directory.
13. I removed the version number from the theme copy.
14. There it was – I reloaded my site and there it was, my old site as it was before the fateful update.

The lesson learned? I wasted several hours updating the theme, but at least I had a backup of the theme to rewind to if anything went wrong, which, of course, it did.

Do the same yourself. You can at least shut off the computer knowing your WordPress website is presentable to the public and you can clean up any remaining spilled milk on the floor the next day.