Do i need to update TwentySeventeen Theme if I am not using it?

  • I constantly see an update notification on my WP dashboard about updating the TwentySeventeen theme.
    However, my site isn’t actually using the Twenty Seventeen theme – i use an entirely other one.

    I see everywhere that it states its important to update the WP themes, but my question to this is
    A) if i select update, will it replace my current theme… which i dont want
    B) do i even update at all if i am not using it?

    Thank you!!

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by stripesofshe.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • It will only update that specific theme
    always good to update in case you need to revert to it to check any potentail faults in the future but not updating it would not be an issue

    No. You don’t need to update it. In fact, if you’re not using it at all, you can just delete the twentyseventeen folder in the wp-content\themes folder and you won’t get notifications.

    However, just be aware, that at least in the past — maybe not after Gutenberg’s release — everytime you update WordPress, it will put the twentyseventeen folder back.

    I suspect, that after the Gutenberg release, you’ll start seeing twentynineteen instead of twentyseventeen, by default.

    It is a good idea to keep the default theme installed for troubleshooting. Yes you should keep it updated.

    Updating that theme shouldn’t hurt a thing since you are not using it at this time and the update should never affect the theme you are running.

    If the theme you are running ever has an update then you need to think about any customizations you might have done. Those customizations should have been done in a Child theme but if they weren’t done that way, it might be best to wait and create a child theme first. Move your customizations over to the child then do the update.

    And I’d make a backup copy of the base theme before I did the update rather than chance losing my hard work by forgetting something.

    You can delete any theme you aren’t running if you are confident you can reinstall them manually if you ever need one of the default themes.

    I do the updates just to keep the notifications out of my hair.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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