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You’ve just finished customizing your WordPress site, and it’s finally looking exactly how you want, colors on point, layout perfectly polished. But just as you’re ready to show it off, a notification pops up: there’s a critical security update for your theme.
Now you’re faced with a tough decision: update and risk disrupting your WordPress custom CSS, or skip it and leave your site exposed.
Regularly updating your WordPress theme helps keep your site secure, compatible, and feature-rich. These updates often include security patches, ensure your site works smoothly with the latest WordPress core and plugins, and introduce new features to improve your site’s design and user experience.
However, if you add custom CSS to WordPress, updating your theme can be tricky. You want to apply updates without losing your customizations or risking issues with your site.
This article will guide you through how to update WordPress themes while keeping custom CSS intact, provide a step-by-step update process, introduce WordPress child themes for managing customizations, and explain how Pressable’s features, like staging environments and automatic WordPress updates, support smooth theme management.
Losing your custom CSS during WordPress theme updates can cause major headaches, leading to design inconsistencies, broken layouts, and a loss of the branding elements that make your site unique. The styles you carefully crafted to improve user experience might vanish, leaving your site looking unpolished and unprofessional.
For your WooCommerce store, this could have a serious impact on your customers’ experience:
Losing custom CSS could literally mean losing customers. Luckily, as we’ll see in the next section, this is totally avoidable.
When WordPress updates a theme, it replaces the entire theme folder with a fresh copy from the developer. Any WordPress custom CSS you’ve added directly to the theme’s style.css file gets overwritten in the process, because that file is part of what’s being replaced.
CSS stored outside the theme folder survives WordPress theme updates. Styles added through the WordPress dashboard, for example, are saved to the database rather than to theme files, so updates don’t touch them.
Updating your WordPress theme doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your custom CSS. With the right approach, you can keep your site secure and up-to-date while preserving your unique design. You’ll need to back up your site, use a child theme for customizations, test on a staging site, and update through the dashboard or file transfer.
Before updating your theme, create a comprehensive backup of your entire website.
A complete backup includes your database, theme files, plugins, and uploads. This thorough approach allows for easy rollback if needed, minimizing potential downtime and data loss during the update process.
Premium WordPress hosts, like Pressable, provide daily automated backups that make this process easier. If you need to restore your site, you don’t need to worry. You can do it directly from the dashboard, adding an extra layer of security to your update process.
Remember, a good backup is your best defense against update-related issues. Don’t skip this step.
If you’ve been adding custom CSS directly to your theme, it’s time to change tactics. This is where you turn to child themes.
Child themes are essentially copies of other themes that you can customize without fear of losing your changes. They aren’t complete copies. Rather, most child themes consist of just a few basic files, including a style.css file and a functions.php file.
The child theme will have its own folder, which will contain its own style.css file and functions.php file. The child theme, however, won’t contain an index.php file, a page.php file, a single.php file, or other standard theme files. It will leverage the parent theme for these properties.
Because child themes have their own style.css file, they support custom CSS. More importantly, child themes retain all of their custom CSS when their parent themes are updated. Updating the parent theme won’t affect the child theme’s style.css file.
A child theme inherits the parent theme’s functionality and styling while giving you a safe space for customizations. This approach ensures your changes won’t vanish during theme updates.
/*
Theme Name: Parent Theme Child
Theme URI: http://example.com/parent-theme-child/
Description: A child theme of ParentTheme
Author: Your Name
Author URI: http://example.com
Template: parenttheme
Version: 1.0.0
*/function my_child_theme_enqueue_styles() {
$parent_style = 'parent-style';
wp_enqueue_style( $parent_style, get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style',
get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/style.css',
array( $parent_style ),
wp_get_theme()->get('Version')
);
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_child_theme_enqueue_styles' );
Before you dive into updating your live site, set up a staging environment. A staging site is a private copy of your live website. It’s your testing ground for updates, letting you spot and squash any bugs before they crawl into your actual site.
With a staging site, you can update your theme, test all functionality thoroughly, identify potential conflicts with plugins or custom code, and make sure your custom CSS still works as intended.
Pressable’s WordPress hosting simplifies this process with smart staging environments. You can create a mirror of your live site with just a few clicks, test your updates, and then push the changes live when you’re confident everything works as expected.
Remember, a few minutes spent testing can save you hours of troubleshooting on a live site.
Now that you’ve set up your staging site, it’s time to update your theme there. Going through the WordPress dashboard is typically the easiest way to do this. Here’s how:
This process mirrors what you’d do on your live site, allowing you to test the update in a safe environment. Remember, you’re working on your staging site, so don’t panic if something looks off, that’s exactly why we’re testing first.
Sometimes, the dashboard method isn’t an option. That’s when Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) comes in handy. You might use this method if:
Here’s how to update your theme using SFTP:
After updating, check that it all works correctly and that your custom CSS is still applied. If you hit any snags, you can easily revert to the old version by renaming the folders.
SFTP gives you more control, but it also requires more care. Double-check each step to ensure a smooth update process.
After updating your theme, it’s time to test your site to make sure everything works as expected. Here’s what to focus on:
Common issues you might encounter include layout shifts, missing design elements, or broken responsiveness. If you spot any problems, don’t panic. You can often restore lost CSS from your backups or child themes.
Don’t forget to verify compatibility with your essential plugins. Sometimes, theme updates can conflict with certain plugins, so it’s important to check that everything plays nicely together.
Finally, run a basic performance check using a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights. This can help you spot any significant performance drops that might have occurred due to the update.
Once again, thorough testing now can save you from headaches later, so take your time.
After thorough testing on your staging site, it’s time to push the update to your live site. Choose a low-traffic period to minimize disruption and ensure you have a recent backup ready before proceeding.
To update your live site, go to Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard and activate the updated theme.
Monitor your live site closely after the update, checking key pages and functionality. If any issues arise, be prepared to revert to your backup quickly.
Remember, even with careful preparation, unexpected problems can occur. That’s why having a reliable hosting partner like Pressable is the secret to smooth theme updates. They can provide quick support and help you troubleshoot any issues that may arise during the process.
Sometimes, you’ll want to switch to a completely new theme that better fits your website’s needs. Here’s how to preserve and transfer your custom CSS:
For more control, you can add CSS via the functions.php file:
function my_custom_styles() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'custom-style', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/custom-style.css' );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_custom_styles' );
Remember to test these changes on a staging site first. Some CSS may need adjusting to work with your new theme’s structure. Take your time to ensure everything looks and functions as expected before pushing changes live.
Pressable simplifies WordPress theme updates with features designed for safety and efficiency. Our WordPress Cloud platform includes daily automated backups, protecting your site’s data. Smart WordPress staging environments allow risk-free update testing before going live.
With a 100% uptime guarantee SLA, your site remains accessible during updates, while auto-scaling capabilities handle any post-update traffic spikes, ensuring smooth performance.
Should you encounter issues, our expert support team is available 24/7 to assist. By choosing Pressable, you’re gaining a partner committed to keeping your WordPress site updated, secure, and performing at its best.
Ready to experience worry-free WordPress theme updates? Check out Pressable’s pricing plans and take the first step towards a more secure and efficient WordPress site!
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