Updating, or making other major changes to your site infrastructure, can sometimes break your site. To avoid this, below are some steps you can take to prevent any difficulties from affecting your live site.
Recommended steps before updating
Make a backup
While you should regularly backup your website this is especially important before updating.
For Elementor Hosting users, see Back up your website for more details.
If you’re using third-party hosting, consult your website host or you can use a WordPress backup plugin.
Read the documentation on the new release.
- For WordPress updates, check out the WordPress.org news section
- For the Elementor and Elementor Pro plugins this includes blog posts, changelogs, and community announcements. You can check the plugin changelogs here (Core) and here (Pro).
Check Addon compatibility
Many creators use Elementor addons. These addons are created and maintained by third parties.Before updating, we recommend checking with these third-parties to make sure they are compatible with the most recent version of Elementor and Elementor Pro.
From WP-Admin, go to Elementor>Apps for a list of popular tools that can enhance websites while using Elementor.
Test the update on a staging site.
- For Elementor Hosting users with a Business, Grow or Scale plan, your site comes with a staging site. For more details see, What is a staging site?
- If your site is hosted with a third-party, check with your hosting party about setting up a staging site. In many cases, these staging sites are not considered a license activation so you can use Elementor Pro on them without an issue. See Is my staging site considered a license activation? for more details. However, if your staging site is not on the list of approved sites, you may have to temporarily deactivate your Elementor Pro license from the live site to activate it on the staging site, unless you have multiple licenses available.
- You can set up a staging site on your own compute using a solution such as Local by Flywheel. When building a staging website using a local machine, Elementor Pro doesn’t register as an install, meaning you can run Elementor Pro on your local machine and on your online website at the same time. This works on .local, .dev, and .test domains. The disadvantage is that the system settings won’t be exactly the same as your live site.
You can use an external staging site service such as WP Stagecoach or WP-Staging. The disadvantage is that the system settings won’t be exactly the same as your live site.
