Accidentally Deleted Parent Theme

  • Hi, I just got some work done to my site through a child theme by a developer (theme is Divi). I then saw i had 2 divi themes and so deleted one – which turns out was the parent theme!! So my child theme is now not working and all work done has been lost… is there any way to undelete the theme??

    I still have another copy of the Divi theme (non child) installed but seems the child theme was made from the other version.

    I tried to upload Divi again and it said “Destination folder already exists… upload failed”.

    Is there any way to recover all the changes and the deleted parent theme?

    Also, for day to day purposes should i have the child theme active all the time or the parent theme? Would be helpful to know… Thank you.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • Any backup available?

    Thread Starter elliebc

    (@elliebc)

    unfortunately last backup was before the changes were made in the child theme..

    But you still have all the changes that were made in the child theme, right? It is usually only several files anyway. So, download all the files from child theme, restore using your latest backup, then re-upload child theme files.
    Problem solved. ??

    Thread Starter elliebc

    (@elliebc)

    Last backup was before the child theme was installed – think that maybe an issue? The backup I have is backup from WP-DB plugin not sure if this is a backup of entire site? Have never tried restoring one before :/

    The child and its parent should not be in the same directory. Did you actually delete the child theme? Having two directories with the same name shouldn’t have been possible, unless the capitalization or something was different between them.

    Anyway, if you use a child theme, it should always remain active since it contains the modifications made to the parent. If you kept the parent active, there would be no reason for the child theme to exist since none of its content would be loaded. When using a child theme, the parent still needs to be there as files that are not present in the child theme are loaded from the parent.

    Concerning the backup with WP-DB (I’ve never used it), if it only backs up the database, it won’t help with the missing files that got deleted.

    Thread Starter elliebc

    (@elliebc)

    Hi MarkRH – no I didn’t delete the child theme, it’s the parent theme that I deleted by accident as I had 2 versions of Divi. I thought i’d delete the older one but turns out that was the parent theme. Not so smart. So not sure what you mean by directory? I’m just looking under appearance – themes and can’t see anyway to retrieve it there..
    Thanks, Ellie

    Well, how about this approach?

    You uninstall all Divi themes (or the remaining one), copy all the files from child theme to your computer, then delete child theme too.

    Then, you install Divi, and make child theme for it (I’m lazy guy so I use one plugin for that). ??

    Finally, you copy the child theme files you have on your computer back to child theme folder on your WP installation.

    Does it make sense?

    Maybe it’s little late…
    From FTP change child theme folder to anything, (like diviold).
    You should be able to Install main divi now, every thing should work now if not chnge child theme folder name back to orignal

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • The topic ‘Accidentally Deleted Parent Theme’ is closed to new replies.