About to Update Wordpress and X - A Couple of Quick Questions

[JK2013]

Good Morning. I’ve been using X Theme for years and my website has been running smoothly for quite some time. However, I haven’t updated wordpress or the X theme over the course of that period. Knowing that efficiency is the key I think it’s time to update so my SEO doesn’t suffer as a result of older software. Currently, I’m running:

Wordpress: 4.8.6

X Theme: Running a CHILD THEME with Custom Settings on ETHOS FRAMEWORK
X THEME: 4.6.4

So this being said, as a precautionary measure I wanted to touch base on the proper way to update these older versions. My hope is to do it in a manner which in theory would cause the least amount of changes to the website requiring fixes.

I guess I’ll start there and I figured this would be a better method than updating first and then coming to the forum in an emergency ‘need help now’ situation.

My website is: www.garrettandwalker.com

I have created a backup through my hosting as well as a backup using updraft.

Thank you for your help.

[rad]

Hi @JK2013,

Thanks for reaching out.

Your versions are too old, updating it will break existing formats but should be fixable but some may require re-building. I recommend doing the update in a staging site (a clone of your live site) then do the update and fixes there. And once it’s up and running, you can migrate your staging back to the live site overwriting in.

Never update your live site since there will be feature gaps from very old version and to the latest. It will cause downtime and will hurt your site’s SEO.

And the transition will be more smooth if you can hire a webmaster or developer that can focus on the troubleshooting.

Thanks!