Hello,
You can see the changelog of the current version (1.1.6) in this file: https://themes.trac.www.ads-software.com/browser/blackoot-lite/1.1.6/readme.txt?rev=57789 under the “changelog” section.
As you can see, there is no major change that should affect your site.
As general rules of thumb:
– Theme updates should take just a couple of seconds to install when you click “update”, and make no visible change on your site. They usually include under-the-hood enhancements, bug fixes and features additions; but should not affect your site in a negative or otherwise annoying way.
– If you have made any change directly to a theme file (which you should never do), these changes will be overwritten.
– If you have custom code added through a child theme or a third party plugin (like a custom CSS editor) then you are fine.
– In any case, you should ALWAYS have your site backed up. Not only before updating a theme, or a plugin, or WordPress itself, but all the time.
Most of the time you won’t need it, but if anything goes sideways at some point then you can always restore your site to a previous “good” state using a backup copy.
If something breaks or gets compromised on your site or hosting server and you don’t have a backup copy, then you may have no way to get it back!
