How to update premium WordPress themes?

Question

I have a question about premium themes in general, not a specific one.

When you need to update a premium theme, a lot of websites suggest that you deactivate and delete your existing copy of the theme. Then you're supposed to upload and activate the new version.

I'm not a theme developer so perhaps I don't understand how this all works, but a lot of premium themes add custom options in your admin area. Some of these options will be stuff like custom SEO settings or other stuff.

If you were to deactivate and delete a theme before uploading the updated version, wouldn't it delete the settings you've saved for all those options?

Additionally, when you try to simply upload the new theme in the admin area without deleting the old version, it says that it can't overwrite the existing folder. Is there a way to force themes to overwrite their existing version so they can just be uploaded via the admin area without having to delete the previous version?

Hopefully this makes sense :) Any help or advice would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

The theme's options are stored in the database, and when you delete the theme from the "themes" folder you are only deleting its files, you are not altering the database in any way, so when you upload the new version of the theme it can still access those options without you losing any information.

You don't even need to deactivate the old theme providing the new version's folder name is the same as the old one.

To avoid the "folder already exists" error you can simply rename the old theme's folder and upload the new one, that way you can have a backup in case the new version of the theme doesn't work as you expected.

And just a side note, if you are planning to make modifications to premium themes, always use child themes, otherwise all your modifications will be lost once you update.