Blog

09 Oct 2020

Pagespeed Framework (v5) Status

Development / 32 Comments

First of all, thanks to those who have updated to the Pagespeed Framework. We've received a a lot of feedback from the release. Since the release on Monday, we've been receiving 400 to 500 tickets every day related to the update. Our team has been working very hard to help everyone resolving every ticket in a timely manner. Since a lot of the tickets are related to the common issues, we would like to send out advice on the best approach to update your Themify themes and plugins.

Why Do We Have So Many Tickets?

Despite that we've recommended users to update on a staging site on our release post, but most users have updated on their live sites. Some users updated due to the automatic update feature on Themify Updater. Some don't have a staging site to test it. Most other users are excited to try out the new version as they have anticipated for a long time.

Among the daily 500+ tickets, some are bug reports, but most of them are related to the changes (eg. child themes and cusotm CSS no longer working). All critical bugs are fixed and released in 5.0.1. If you are using 5.0.0, please update it again.

Before You Update, Please Check:

Does your site have one of the following:

• Child Theme:
  • If you have a child theme with custom PHP templates (eg. header.php, footer.php, page.php, etc.), you would need to redo them due to the changes in the new version.
  • If your child theme only contains a style.css, then it is fine. But if your child theme has the functions.php file that enqueue the parent theme style.css, please remove that function. You don't need to enqueue the parent theme style.css as our framework would do it automatically.
• Custom CSS:
  • If your site is heavily customized with custom CSS, some of your CSS might not be in effect due to the HTML structure changes. In this case, you can let us know and we can help you to address it.
  • If you use Customize panel to style your theme, then it is fine. All styling done in Customize panel should remain effective. If not, try to run the Customize panel and save it again (this will regenerate the CSS).
• Massive Plugins:
  • If your site uses a large number of plugins, there is a chance for plugin compatibility issues and conflicts.
  • We are certain that our framework and themes are compatible with all major plugins, but there might be some plugins we missed from our testing. If this issue arise, report it to us and we will debug it.
• Builder Addons:
  • Note that the new framework requires the latest version of all Builder Addons. They work hand in hand. If you update your theme, remember to update all addons together.

Update Best Practice: Staging Site

We strongly recommend to create a staging site for all major updates. If you don't have a staging site, please read our tutorial on how to make a staging site. Most major host providers have the staging site feature. If not, you can create it with Duplicator or WP Staging plugin.

The advantage of staging site is to test stuffs without affecting your live site. You can use it to test WordPress updates, themes and plugins. It also makes debugging easier as you can compare two sites side-by-side. It is time to create one if you don't have it yet.

Roll Back To The Previous Version

If you happen to update your theme, but want to roll it back, you can use the latest Themify Updater to downgrade your Themify themes and plugins easily.

To downgrade a Themify theme:

• With Themify Updater (1.2.6+) activated and a valid license key, go to Themify > Updates, select the previous version and click "Re-install Theme"
• You may also go to Dashboard > Themify License > Themes, click "Re-install" and select the previous version.

To downgrade Builder addons:

• Go to Dashboard > Themify License > Plugins > Builder Addons, click "Re-install" and select the previous version.