You may never need the Divi rollback option, but when you do, it can be a lifesaver…or at least a site-saver.
Heck, most sites don’t even use the Divi WordPress theme (though many do), so this likely isn’t even directly applicable to you. But the principles are.
(Note: This post may contain affiliate links to the services and products discussed.)
Here is the scenario that led me to this situation, and it’s a fairly typical one:
- I’m running this site on WPX Hosting, which just happens to be the best hosting platform I’ve used to date (affiliate link).
- I run a couple of other sites, too, and have a certain number of “slots” available with my hosting plan.
- Those slots are all full, which means I don’t have a testing, or staging, version of this site. (I do have frequent and copious backups, though.)
- A Divi theme update recently rolled out.
- I applied said update to this site.
- The site broke:
That’s a panic-inducing sight, to be sure.
But, since the website had been functioning fine all day, and since the only change I had made was applying the Divi update, I was pretty sure that was the culprit.
So…how to fix something like that?
Well, the only real solutions are to 1) switch to another theme or 2) rollback to a previous, working, version of Divi.
Since I’m using several Divi-specific features, Option #1 wasn’t great, so it was on to Option #2.
Now, for most themes, and for early versions of Divi, rolling back is not a trivial operation, with these basic paths available for accomplishing the task:
- Restore the full website from a backup
- Download a backup of the website and extract the earlier version of the theme, then uninstall the current (broken) version of the theme and install the old (working) version of the theme
- Hunt down and download an older version of theme from the web (likely from ElegantThemes for Divi), uninstall the broken version, and install the old (working) version
All of them are hassles, at least. Some of them are impossible under certain circumstances.
With “modern” version of Divi, though, you can do it all through your WordPress dashboard like so …
1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard:
2. Scroll down to “Divi” and pick “Theme Options”:
3. Click into the “Updates” tab:
4. Click “ROLLBACK TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION”:
5. Click “Rollback to the previous version”
WordPress and Divi will work their magic and, voilà! — crisis averted (most of the time).
Check your site to make sure it’s working, and then start to think about how you might deploy a testing site (like I need to do).
And…it might not be a bad time to make sure your site backups are functioning as you expect. It’s never a bad time for that, come to think of it.
The post How to Perform a Divi Rollback appeared first on The Moonlighting Writer.
