Archived topic
"must" I update your theme even when I am happy w/ the installed version?
5 replies · Started by cknight on August 9, 2022
As I said, I am very happy w/ our website running on Generate Press. I don't anticipate needing or wanting new capacities you might include in future updates. Basically, I simply want the theme to continue to do what it does now.
Must I be prepared to update each time you release an update? Or could I do very well by updating once a year? Subsidiary question: Do you do releases from time to time that feature critical security updates? If so, how will I know if I am only looking to update once a year?
Right now I check in every few months looking for updates, but at some point in the future I will have to pay someone to check for and install (w/ precautionary staging) critical updates. I am trying to figure out what to expect.
Hi there,
You can keep track of updates in our changelog:
https://generatepress.com/category/development/
Critical Updates relating to WP Security, if that ever happened we would probably mailshot all our users, and post on social media as well as in this forum. Fortunately we have never had too.
Updating once a year, i can't see any issues with that.
David:
Your response is very helpful and reassuring to me that I can depend on Generate Press as a theme. It will help keep my anxiety in check about the theme suddenly not functioning (a trauma I have already experienced with another theme, published by a different company, of course.)
You mention a "mailshot." If you did a mailshot about a security issue or some other issue, would your mail to list include all users or just those with the Premium account status?
I also wonder if another critical issue for folks like you who create WP themes is whether a major WP "upgrade" release might make certain coding you use obsolete. Has that ever happened with WP? Or do they always make changes backward compatible? If this issue were to ever arise, would that be an occasion for a mailshot to users to say, "Be sure to upgrade your theme before upgrading WP."?
Knowing the answers to these sorts of questions will make planning easier for the long-term site maintenance protocols for our 26-year-old site.
Thanks.
Charles
Hi Charles,
we only have email addresses for those users who have a premium account.
We would mailshot ALL users we hold account details for including those with expired licenses ( who have not asked for the account to be deleted ).
For free theme users we would whatever we could via the WP Forum, primarily a sticky notice in that support forum.
But to be honest, there has never been a requirement for this in the 5+ years i have been a user/contributor to GeneratePress. So we have contingencies that have yet to be tested. Which i can put down to the diligence of Tom and the developers keeping on top of things.
Which leads nicely onto your next point. Does WP introduce breaking changes ? For sure. Do they break things we do, rarely ever. As Backwards compatibility for WP is super important, as it is for us at GP.
David:
Thanks for the additional reassurance for those of us who have been traumatized by a WP theme suddenly breaking. "The diligence of Tom and the developers" is one of the great values Generate Press users receive and can depend on.
I have one remaining critical communication I will mention which I would very much like to receive from Tom and crew: Should they ever decide to sell the theme or company to some other corporation, please, please let your users and fans know. That way we can up our user-end diligence in watching to make sure coding quality does not decline under new ownership.
Should they ever decide to sell the theme or company to some other corporation, please, please let your users and fans know.
We have absolutely no plans for this at the moment but we will definitely let the users know if this type of big change is coming.
