How to migrate from Twenty Twenty-Three to Twenty Twenty-Four?

Bye the bye: It turns out that with release of WordPress 6.4 (and perhaps earlier releases) one may edit a new theme in “preview” mode, and the edits remain when one exits preview mode, thereby allowing the building of the new theme “look and feel” on a [production] website without affecting the current active theme.

This means installed but non-active themes are editable (with the Full Site Editor), and allows introducing the theme change at leisure, and then “activating” the new theme when it is deemed ready for production.

I’m doing this now on a production website with release 6.4 and the Twenty Sixteen theme (pre-block, Classic theme), and Twenty Twenty-Four as the new (future) theme. Changes to the Twenty Twenty-Four theme (in preview mode) made yesterday remain present today, and I continue to build out the look and feel of Twenty Twenty-Four in preview mode. All the while, the Twenty Sixteen theme was and is active, and the website continues to operate correctly.

Although this does not resolve the migration issue, it does mitigate the impact of theme change somewhat.

@harry-hobbes Sadly this does not work for me because when you try to save your changes in preview mode there is only an “activate and save” button but not only “save”.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Marc Toensing.

Hi,
So to sum it all up:
1. The suggested way to build wordpress sites is to use the template editor instead of the “old way” of creating home page via the page section – right?

2. When updating to a new theme – there is no way to migrate the design and content from the old template to the new one.

3. The only way to kind of doing it is to create a custom page by copying everything from the template editor in Twenty Twenty-Three and paste it into a new page. after creating this new page I can set it is the new homepage. after doing it I should inspect and adjust the layout if needed. but in general it should be the same as my previous theme.

4. Maybe in the future there will be a way to migrate everything (content and design) from one theme to another – but as for now it’s not available.

If it’s correct I guess most of the page owners will not update to a new theme – because it’s like building a new webpage from the ground instead of an easy migration.

Right?
Regards,
Ram

@ramf correct.

All those nav, header, footer and other block settings lost even though they are completely compatible. It negates the portability completely.

I just realized after a day’s work that I hadn’t made a child theme, made one, and of course lost all the settings and have to start over.

There really should be an easy way to export and import template layout & settings. I hope they do that soon.

I wish I hadn’t used the ‘recommended’ customization methods and did it all in CSS and functions.php like I used to before this. Copy, paste, done.

I found a somewhat solution out of desperation searching the database. You’ll want to make a backup and this will only work if you have access to the database.

Go to WP posts and under [your prefix]_posts, search by post type.

When you enter %template_part%, you’ll see a type called “wp_template_part” these entries will have their own titles such as “Header”. They will only exist for your current template if you have saved this template part since switching. If you haven’t, you’ll only see the old theme’s entry. In your site editor, you can go to this block, make an edit and save it. Then you’ll see this new row when you search for wp_template_part in the posts under post type. Copy the old value to the new. You’ll need to do this for any template parts you find, title to title.

In your site editor be sure to make a style change to your new theme and save. Then you’ll see another of these when you search. Search the same column (post type) for %global%, you’ll see a wp_global_styles type. The title for these records should be “Custom Styles”. Copy the value from the old to the new.

Hi @@industrialweb,
Really appreciate the pointers and the legwork you’ve put in.

In my opinion – This should be something built it wordpress theme.
When upgrading / migrating from one wordpress official theme to another – all the heavy lifting should be done automatically.

The recommended way to use the site editor instead of pages is not really something one can use without the ability to migrate it all to a new official theme.

Ram

100% agreed. Just migrating from Twentytwentyfour to Twentytwentyfour child theme I lost everything I had worked on. It took all day and a lot of work to reclaim it. Why work in blocks, which are supposed to be portable, if they are going to vanish like this and take so much work to reclaim?

I was thinking I could write a plugin to do this from one theme to another, but I really hope the need disappears before then.