Awhile back I wrote about the greatness of the Weaver II Pro theme (or Weaver II, its free counterpart). To summarize, I think it is the only WordPress theme for people who don’t want to deal with any coding. Changing the look of Weaver II is just a matter of checking boxes or entering hex codes for the colors you want. It doesn’t get any easier than that!
Anyway, I also wrote about updating your theme safely, including the use of child themes. For those of you who might be considering Weaver II or Weaver II Pro, here’s a bonus for you - No child theme is required! You can make all the changes you want right in the Weaver Admin panel, then update to the latest version of the theme in just a few steps. Here’s how to do it.
Updating Weaver II or Weaver II Pro
1. Back up your settings in the Weaver Admin panel. To back up your settings, simply go to Appearance > Weaver Admin > Save/Restore. You’ll see a screen like this:
Click the button toward the top that says Save Settings. Then you’ll want to look for the second section called “Save/Restore Current Theme Settings using Your Computer.” Use the first Download link to save all your current settings into a file on your computer. (Make sure you know where your computer is saving the file!)
2. Install the Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades plugin. This is a free plugin that is necessary to upgrade Weaver without losing your settings. It only takes a second to install and will make this process go MUCH smoother.
3. Install the new version of the theme. If you’re using the free version of Weaver II, you should be able to update by clicking the Update button under Appearance > Themes. If you’re using Weaver II Pro, you’ll need to download the latest version from the Pro member site, then upload it.
Either way, you’ll want to select YES from the new dropdown box asking if you’re upgrading the existing theme.
4. Activate the new version of the theme. Just click the “Activate” link after you install!
5. Go to Appearance > Weaver Admin > Save/Restore. Back in the second section, you’ll see an option to Upload theme/backup. Upload the file you saved to your computer in Step 1. Once you’ve restored the backup, your site should look exactly the way it did before.
6. One important thing to note: Sometimes when I update Weaver, the header resets and I get the generic piano key image. If that happens, just go to Appearance > Headers and choose your header again from your WordPress Media Library. Problem solved!
