How To Safely Change WordPress Themes On A Live Site?

If you want to change the WordPress template on a live website but don’t know the proper method to do it? Don’t worry this article will help you out.

WordPress theme is not for a lifetime. As your website raises in the web world, you will get stuck at the time where you will have to change the WordPress theme you are using.

But you can’t ignore the fact that changing a complete WordPress theme can cause an issue on your live site. So you need to be careful. You don’t want to take a risk as you might lose all your website functionality, traffic, and search rankings.

In this article, you will learn how you can change themes on live websites safely.

Factors that need to be considered while changing themes of WordPress on a live website

The process of changing the landing page WordPress theme is risky because every WordPress theme has a different layout, functionality, options, and features. While changing the theme, your website might look unorganized or a little wonky for the very first time.

With some small modifications in the design, your website might look organized. but most of the part of your website will get broken and that needs to be fixed.

• Breakage of the core functionality of your website including navigation, contact forms, etc.
• Impacting the SEO of your website and schema data.
• Deleting the custom code snippets including analytics tags and custom functions.
• Changing the configuration of your sidebar.
• Disable shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, and widgets added by the previous theme.

The maximum functionality offered by your current theme, the more it will change over to a new theme.

The important things you have to do before changing your current theme

• Take a backup of your website.
• Custom code snippets should be copied.
• Check your tracking code twice.

3 Different ways to change the landing page WordPress theme on a live website

1. A staging website should be created

You will be able to create a staging website easily if your web host is offering one-click staging. A staging website means a copy of your website that can be edit and can be live once changes have been made.

2. Make use of theme testing plugin

If you are unable to build staging i.e. copy website then also you can do a test of your WordPress theme before making it live.

Plugins provide performance, simplicity, and reliability for theme switches which is very important for all websites. This plugin comes with only those required featured which is required while theme switching plus it is provided with a simple but informative user interface.

Via frontend, visitors will be able to switch the templates, developers will be able to create or customize the templates privately, and much more.

Basic features of Theme Switcha are

• Without deactivating the plugin, disable or enable the theme switching.
• Works perfectly with any parent themes, theme, and child themes.
• Compatible with WP multisite.
• Compatible with and without Gutenberg Block editor.
• And more.

3. Utilize the features of live preview offered by WordPress

You can preview the changes made on your website in real-time with the standard live preview feature.

Things to do once you changed your old theme to the new one

To ensure no problem is discovered after changing the clean minimal WordPress theme you need to consider some more aspects

• Examine your website
• Add code snippets
• Keep track of your analytics
• Ask your customers or viewers to leave feedback

Conclusion:

The process of changing the WordPress template on a live website is very sensitive, but considering some important factors and ensuring by taking the right precautions, without changing or losing data and traffic you can change the appearance and functionality of your website.

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