- This topic has 8 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
In our agency we have stopped using genesis and it's childthemes. We find it absolutely annoying that studiopress offers "updates" to their own childthemes, which entirely change the look and feel of the affected websites.
I've talked to the studiopress people about this already a few years ago after we've experienced a catastrophe while updating a customers website. I really wonder, why new look and feels are not offered under new theme names.
An upgrade, which changes everything on the website, is not an upgrade anymore. This is a definite No-Go.
Updates to child themes are a rarity, and when done, are not required nor automatic updates. Its your choice whether you wish to update.
PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 4 are different -- a company is not going to rename a popular brand. The version itself is the indicator that it's different.
Learn the industry: Backward compatibility is not guaranteed when a version jumps a entire digit (major). We can't move forward and stay behind at the same time. LifesStyle Pro, for example, came out in 2010 and it used the common tech of the time which was not responsive among other things. The version was 1.0 and was followed by minor updates (1.0, 1.0.1, etc.). In the README.txt file the changelog was included. Now this theme is in version 3.x. When a version jumps from 1 to 2 (major), this means that there is probably not total backward compatibility if any. Minors are compatible and Majors are usually not ... new classes, functions and and styles (look and feel). Bootstrap, the most used front-end framework, uses this approach and it's very common in technology. The developer is supposed to skip it and not do anything, patch it, or sell their clients on the new look and feel. They are also supposed to read the docs, look at demos, and — when updates occur — learn what is affected. Also using staging site or a local desktop install of WordPress will avoid thousands of problems.
Whether rare or not: Something, which applies an entirely new design (without warning before!) is definitely not an upgrade. I have problems explaining the customers, they should update everything whenever possible, but leave the child theme as is.
Honestly I do not see a reason, why Studiopress does not publish new designs/themes with new names. The design change should happen, when it is wished by the website owner, not by a third party.
StudioPress themes do not auto-update, nor do they even give indications in WordPress that updated versions are available.
What has happened twice in the past (only those times that I'm aware of), is when a StudioPress theme has the same name as a theme in the WordPress.org repository, and for some reason, WP throws out an "update available" message and that mistakenly gets a lot of people doing an update through their WP installations, which gives them an entirely different theme, and one that's not even a Genesis child theme to boot. I think in some cases, the theme was allowed to auto-update because of settings in some folks' installations, but I'm not 100% sure about that part.
Unless you manually update a Genesis child theme, they will not update without human intervention. Even when notifications of updates to the framework are available, you are emailed first to be told that one is available.
As for themes with new names, all of the old themes that were redesigned with "Pro" suffixes are new names. "Lifestyle" and "Lifestyle Pro" are entirely different themes; "Lifestyle" was available until 2013 and used version numbers 1.x and 2.x, while "Lifestyle Pro" replaced it, starting the version numbering at 3.0. The theme names are different, even the folder names are different. What will not happen is an auto-update from "Lifestyle" to "Lifestyle Pro", nor would any updated versions of "Lifestyle Pro" ever be updated without a person actually performing the update.
So, which theme of yours auto-updated, and are you sure it changed to another Genesis child theme? I ask because what you are describing sounds exactly what happened when WordPress pushed out an update to a theme from the repository, and it accidentally triggered overwriting of Genesis child themes of the same name and folks updated them, and maybe even was done automatically on sites where auto-updates are enabled.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark@Heinz - I work for a third party theme developer (Pretty Darn Cute Design), and the rare times we have updated a theme was to add in additional functionality which a lot of customers had requested.
In those instances, if a client wanted to get the update, they had to activate another theme in their dashboard, delete the existing theme, and then install the new theme. There is no way that could be done accidentally.
I believe the same case would apply for StudioPress child theme updates.
Dear Summer,
we experienced that with: agency and agentpress. There were no pro versions at that time, but the original themes even at the studiopress-site looked different (I've looked at the themes-website after the "update" in order to find out what happened).
Recently I've experienced that with landscape, which bugs me no more, as we turned genesis down at the customers site, and use another theme, based on skeleton.
Heinz, take a look at these:
https://wordpress.org/themes/agency/
https://wordpress.org/themes/prose/
https://wordpress.org/themes/focus/These are ones I know had problems with random updates from WordPress accidentally, which overwrote the StudioPress themes. As for Landscape, that theme isn't even offered by StudioPress anymore, so how could it possibly have done an auto-update on you?
Another thought, I think some Genesis child themes are available on WordPress.com, but I have no idea how they work over there, if they are included in automatic updates through there.
This auto-updating of themes is not a StudioPress problem, because StudioPress does not have a system like that active for child themes. Possibly it's a WordPress problem, associated with their auto-update system, but what you are blaming StudioPress for cannot happen without a human doing the update.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkIt is indeed a WordPress repo issue, which they have finally fixed.
**forum signature**
If you need technical support for your theme please file a ticket.The forums are community based. Staff only monitors the forum for issues relating to the forum itself and to redirect users to where they need to go.
- The forum ‘General Discussion’ is closed to new topics and replies.