Updating your WordPress, theme or plugins can sometimes be a frustrating experience due to possible errors and issues that can affect your website.
What To Do Before Updating
Before updating, be it Astra Theme, Astra Pro addon, WordPress installation, or any other plugin on your website, please follow these steps as they should help your updates go smoothly:
- Keep your auto-updates off – this includes WordPress, your Astra theme, and all plugins. Though it may be easier to have automatic updates, this can create issues with your website and even bring it down. To ensure that you have control over your updates, we would suggest keeping these turned off and doing your manual updates regularly.
- Always make a backup before updating – before any update, you should make a backup of your website. Though the updates for the majority of themes and plugins are tested before being released, there is no guarantee that these will work perfectly in every situation. There is always a possibility of an issue arising from some plugins or theme updates, and having a backup will keep you safe from losing any data. If you end up with a hard-to-solve issue, you can always restore your website from your backup. Please check this article for more information on how to backup your website.
- Avoid beta versions unless you know what you’re doing – though it may be tempting to test the newest version and features of plugins and themes as soon as they are available with the beta release, these are not stable versions and can cause additional problems. Thus, if you’re not an experienced user, it’s better to wait for a stable version. You can of course test beta versions on your test site or local environment.
- Use staging environment – do all of your updates on your staging site. The staging site is the exact copy of your live (production) website where you can do all updates and tests without affecting the live environment. This will ensure that you can do your updates safely and that if any issues arise this will not affect your users or cause downtime. Once the updates are done and any potential issues are resolved, you can sync your staging environment with your live website and transfer the updated website. You can do this by using some of the staging plugins or manually using your localhost. Some hosts also offer the staging environment as part of their service. Please check this article for more information.
Common Issues After Updating
- Clear your cache – sometimes though the update went well, it seems that the changes are not reflecting on your front end. Most often, this is related to the cached version of your website. Try clearing all of your caches – keep in mind that you should clear both your website cache and your browser cache, as well as server cache as sometimes your host may provide a server caching, or you might be using a content delivery network (CDN).
- White Screen of Death – one of the most common WordPress errors that can happen after an update is for you to find yourself locked out of your website with only an empty white page showing on your screen or the “There has been a critical error on your website” massage. This is known as White Screen of Death. It problem can affect your whole website or just a part of it. Check this article for the instructions on how to fix this.
Issues Related to Updating Astra Theme and Astra Pro Addon
Are you facing issues while updating the Astra theme or Astra Pro Addon? We have listed down some issues users face and have provided the corresponding solution for the same.
Please note that if everything else fails, you can ultimately update the theme or plugin manually. You won’t lose any of your data or settings while updating manually. How to Manually Update the Theme and Plugin?
Update Notification Not Available
Sometimes users might not see any update notification for the Astra theme or Astra Pro Addon plugin. To fix this issue for the Astra Pro Addon plugin you need to make sure you have the license for the plugin active.
To re-authorize your license key, go to Appearance > Astra Options > Astra Pro License and paste the license key and click the Activate License button under your license key field. How to activate Astra Pro Addon license?
After that, visit the Updates page of the WordPress Dashboard and force check using the Check Again button a couple of times.
Or you can directly force check by visiting the following link a couple of times –
<your-site>/wp-admin/update-core.php?force-check=1
This would display any updates if they are not being rendered for your plugins page or themes page.
Update the respective Astra theme and Astra Pro Addon and you will be on the latest versions.
The Package Could Not Be Installed
While trying to Upload the plugin are you seeing the following error – Package could not be installed. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet.
We have a detailed article on the same here.
PCLZIP Error
Are you seeing an error while updating the Astra Pro Addon plugin – Update Failed: The Package could not be installed. PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10): Unable to find End of Central Dir Record Signature.
This issue could be most probably due to zip format or due to the Server Disk Space issue.
We have a detailed article on the same here.
If the issue still persists, you can update the plugin manually to fix this issue, how?
Unable to Upload the Plugin from WordPress Dashboard
Are you on a live server and hosted on a server other than Windows? It could be possible that you do not have the correct permissions to upload the plugin.
So, to fix this issue you will need to contact your hosting service provider and ask them to make sure that you have the permissions to upload/remove/change files on the server through WordPress.
After your permissions have been updated you will be able to upload the plugin without any issues.
Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of Xxxxxxx Bytes Exhausted
This error could be due to numerous issues.
Mainly it could be due to the Memory Limit issue.
A quick fix for this problem could be by increasing your PHP memory limit. You can do that by adding this line to your wp-config.php file which can be found under your root WordPress folder, below the line. /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */ –
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);
If you do not have access to the files you can get in touch with the server admin or hosting provider so that they can make the necessary changes.
Manually Update the Theme and Plugin via Dashboard
Apart from the above issues, if any of the above solutions don’t work, you can always manually update the theme or plugin via FTP.
And the same goes for the plugin via the WordPress Dashboard, for this, you will have to visit the wp-content > plugins.
After that, you can remove and replace the existing Astra Pro Addon folder with the Astra Pro Addons’ unzipped file. This will install the Astra Pro Addon plugin on your website. Now visit the WordPress dashboard and activate the plugin from the Plugins > Installed Plugins.
Note: You won’t lose any of your data or settings while doing the same. This is the same process WordPress adopts but we are doing it manually.
