Upgrading

How to upgrade your theme to a new version

Upgrading your theme is straightforward and similar to the process when you first installed the theme. The steps are the same for upgrading both Fusion Core or a Fusion subtheme.

Note: when upgrading Drupal themes or modules on a live website, you should always put your site in offline (maintenance) mode and create a backup of the files and database before up continuing.

  1. Download the new release of the theme from drupal.org or your dashboard
  2. Upload and overwrite your current theme files with the updated ones
  3. If new files were added in this release or if you are using CSS or JS aggregation, you will need to click the Clear Cached Data button on your Performance page at example.com/admin/settings/performance

That’s it!

In the case of a major update, a default value or theme setting may have changed, requiring you to also re-save the theme settings page. Go to your Themes page, click Configure next to your active theme, and click Save on this page. The release notes of the theme should indicate if this is likely to be necessary.

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How do I know if there is a new release of my theme?

You’ll be notified of new theme releases on your website’s Update Status page. The Update Status report on your website is available at Reports > Available Updates. Scroll down to the bottom to see if your themes have updates available.

We’ll also send you an email when a new version of your theme is released.

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A new version of my theme was released. Should I upgrade?

Themes are well tested before being initially release, but bugs inevitably crop up. We also may add features to themes as our overall technology (and Drupal) improves. While upgrading your theme is generally recommended, it’s not always necessary. In the unlikely event of a security update, you should definitely upgrade at least the affected files.

If you haven’t altered the theme at all, or only minimal changes in your local.css file (you are using the local.css file, right?), you should probably upgrade so you always have the latest and greatest version. When a new version is released, it will include a set of release notes which describe what was changed.

If you have made changes to the theme, especially if these are on a live website where doing thorough testing will be difficult, there’s really no need to upgrade the theme if it is already up and working exactly the way you’d like.

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How do I know what has changed in the new release of my theme?

The release notes will list all changes, including bug fixes and new features. You can view the release notes for Fusion Core here.

For your own Fusion theme, you can view current and past release notes by clicking on the link below the theme on your dashboard.

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Where did all the theme settings go?

If you’ve used a TopNotchThemes theme before, you may have been awed by the sheer volume of options in the theme. For example, you could change the display of taxonomy terms, the author/date, comment link text, etc. While you won’t see these now in your Fusion theme, rest assured that we haven’t left you out in the cold! In order to focus on new features, and to reduce the amount of code we’d have to continually test, maintain, and upgrade, we decided to leave these features to modules, where they really belong. Replacement functionality for these removed settings can be found in these modules or within Drupal core - if we missed one, please let us know:

  • Superfish for drop-down menus such as the Primary menu.
  • Skinr for easy styling of blocks and more.

    • The following items are under Admin >Themes > MY THEME > Settings >

  • Toggle display - The search box, and primary and secondary links have been removed. These are now handled via the block interface (Structure > Blocks), and the menu configuration respectively (Structure > Menus > Settings).
  • Administrator settings > Display block configure links for administrators. This setting is now part of core in Drupal 7; each block has a gear icon.
  • Developer settings > Rebuild theme registry for every page. This has been removed in favor of using Devel module’s cache clearing. If you are comfortable using the command line and have Drush, the command “drush cc all” is also effective.
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