So the good news is that the version 2.0 update for both the Sports Bench plugin and main theme are now slated to come out on Sept. 14.
In order to make sure that you know what to do when it’s released and to help you run into as few problems as possible, this post will walk you through how to update to the 2.0 version of the plugin and main theme.
If you want to learn more about what specifically changed in both the plugin and theme, you can check out the posts from earlier this month.
Take a backup first
The first thing that you’re going to need to do before updating the Sports Bench plugin or theme is to take a backup of your website first. This way, if something were to go really wrong, you can restore your website to the version right before the update. Really, this is something that you should be doing before you update any plugin, theme or WordPress core itself.
First, check to see if your web host takes automatic updates or allows you to take on-demand backups. I know that WP Engine and Pressable are a few of the WordPress-specific web hosts that offer it up to their customers.
If your web host doesn’t offer backups, you can use a plugin like Backup Buddy or UpdraftPlus to do that for you. I’ve been using UpdraftPlus for a church website, and it has worked perfectly for me.
But make sure that you take a backup of your website’s files and database before updating.
Updating the plugin
The good news is that if you haven’t extended or customized the Sports Bench plugin in any way outside of CSS, you’re going to be fine with updating on the day of the release.
Where things might get tricky is if you have extended Sports Bench, especially by using the current set of classes. All of the normal functions were brought over to Sports Bench, but the classes have been changed.
So if you’re in that situation, I would recommend that you deactivate any plugins or themes that have the customizations. Then you can update the Sports Bench plugin. After that, you can use the documentation to change your customizations to match what’s in Sports Bench 2.0 and then reactivate the themes or plugins.
That’s probably going to be your best bet to smoothly update to Sports Bench 2.0.
Updating the theme
For the Sports Bench Main Theme, if you haven’t created a child theme or if you have made a child theme just for CSS edits, you shouldn’t run into any issues while updating. Just take the backup as mentioned above, and you’ll be fine.
But if you have made changes to the template files things might get a bit tricky. Because of the change to use WP Rig as a starter theme, you might run into some issues while updating.
If you are in that situation, I would recommend changing the active theme to the parent Sports Bench main theme and then going through with the update. Once that is complete, you can recreate the child theme template files using the files from the updated theme. When you finish that, you can reactivate the child theme.
Just as a heads up, some of the theme options have changed so regardless of whether you’re using a child theme or not, you will need to double check the theme options after updating.
If you run into a problem
Hopefully, this update runs smoothly for you. I’ve done everything I could to make sure that it will run smoothly for people who haven’t made major customizations to their installs. But sometimes things happen. If you work in web development, you know that something will go wrong.
First off, don’t panic. Everything is going to be okay, especially if you took a backup before updating. After taking a deep breath, take a look at the error and examine it.
Is this something that you can work through or is kind of minor? Cool. You can leave your site as is for now and start to diagnose what might be going wrong.
If it’s something major, go in and restore the backup that you just took. That way your website will be back online and you can scour the error logs to see what might have happened. Then you can reach out for help.
In any case, if you come across an issue, please fill out the “Report a Problem” form or start a topic in the forums and be as specific as possible with the issue. Those are monitored at all times, and I’ll get back to you with help as soon as I can.
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