WordPress Support Stories: When a Theme Update Goes Awry

Updating your WordPress theme is a normal part of site maintenance. Switching themes or even updating current theme files on a self-hosted WordPress site is a major change that should only be done with a full site backup, just in case something goes awry. Need proof? Read Les Tokar’s story.

Les publishes reviews and articles about solid state drives (SSD) and other data storage technologies on his two sites: TechnologyX and The SSD Review. What he thought would be a smooth theme upgrade quickly derailed, but a quick restore saved his site, his search engine ranking, and his income.

The Miracle Worker

Tonight we completed a theme upgrade that had taken the better part of a week to fine tune. Our website is a business that employs several and does very well. At 9:00 p.m., we followed the new theme’s instructions on how to import sample data.

What the update never told us was that it created a new website on top of ours. It imported dozens of pictures and pages and went live immediately. To share just a bit of what we endured, we had to pull automated posts off of each of our 23 social connections (FB/Delicious/Twitter etc.,) as the theme update auto-posted to all.

Next, Google picks up our content within three seconds of posting. Google realized something was wrong and dropped us from their rankings within 10 minutes. We went from hundreds of visitors at any one time to eight-nine within minutes. Long story short, we used Jetpack’s site restore for the first time and it worked quickly and perfectly. What little we have invested doesn’t compare to its value tonight alone. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

— Submitted by flamenko

Big changes like a WordPress site design overhaul can quickly go wrong for various reasons. It’s important to prepare for any situation with a complete site backup you can restore quickly and easily. Every minute your site’s offline reduces your business success. For site owners who generate revenue through their sites, downtime or hacking can mean a loss of data, income, brand credibility, and even search engine ranking.

Jetpack offers daily and real-time backups. There’s no cap on backup size, and three simple ways to restore your site.

If your site has several things wrong with it and you’re unable to pinpoint the problem or you’re migrating your entire site, a full restore will get you back on track.
You can also choose to do a faster partial restore or perform a single-file restore for common mistakes like accidentally deleting or messing up your CSS file.
Not sure what you need? Jetpack priority support is here to guide you through the process in your moment of need.

Jetpack offers security, backups, and easy restoration. Most importantly: expert and priority support when you really need it. Learn more.