Are you facing a WordPress website break due to updating a plugin or you just do not like the new version? Before the visitors see your broken website, you should take an action, or else you would lose revenue, SEO, and traffic as well. Fixing this issue is quite simple by rolling back the WordPress plugin to its previous version. Check out various ways to roll back your WordPress website right below.
When Should You Roll Back Your WordPress Website?
Downgrading your WordPress website is the best practice to keep your website up to date. But, sometimes, your website might break if the update shows some kind of issue with your theme or another plugin or if there is a bug in the code. Therefore, it is always recommended to generate a full WordPress backup before you perform any updates.
Again, restoring your whole website from a backup can be a problem as you might lose other previous changes that you need. Hence, it would be better to identify the defective plugin to make the changes easily. If you want, you can install the previous version of the plugin manually but rolling back or downgrading the plugin version is more effective as a whole. Let us check how?
Ways to Roll Back Your WordPress Website
No matter you need to revert an individual theme or plugin rather than WordPress or to restore a previous version of your whole website, you can use the following ways given below:
Make Use of WP Downgrade to Restore a Previous Version of WordPress
Nowadays, you can find a plugin available in the market for downgrading WordPress. After creating the backup of your site, you can install WP Downgrade to use this method. The process would be:
- Click on Settings > WP Downgrade and fill your target version of WordPress into the field.
- Tap on Save Changes and move to the Updates screen to see the status of your target version.
- Then, press on the Re-install Now tab to accomplish the downgrade.
You can repeat the process to change your target version.
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Rollback Your WordPress Version Manually
To downgrade your WordPress version manually, you can follow the steps below.
- Firstly, you should back up your site for safety.
- Next, deactivate all of your plugins using the bulk Deactivate option.
- Then, download the selected release from the archive of WordPress Releases
- Visit your website via FTP and download a copy of your site backup.
- Delete both wp-includes and wp-admin folders but do not delete the wp-content.
- Upload both the folders wp-includes and wp-admin from the release you have downloaded right now.
Restore a Previous Backup
Another method to roll back your WordPress website is by restoring a previous backup of an earlier version of WordPress. For doing this task, you would need a proper reliable backup system. Make sure that the backup does not miss any crucial content that has been included recently. As a matter of fact, the process of restoring your previous backup depends on the system you want to generate and store your files. Once you are done with the process, you can get access back to your site.
Downgrade a Theme or Plugin Manually
To start the process, you would have to retrieve the files for downgrading the older version of your theme or plugin. The steps are as follows:
- Click on Advanced View on the feature page to find older versions of plugins.
- Then choose the required version from the drop-down menu right at the bottom of the page and tap on Download.
- Make a backup of your site to be safe and then connect to your server through FTP and your chosen client.
- Then click on wp-content > plugins.
- Rename the directory of your plugin’s current version and then upload the file for the previous version you need to roll back.
This way, you can successfully restore the previous version of your plugin with the easy switching back to the latest version.