WordPress Plugin/Theme/Core Update Rollback

  • I’m not really sure where this belongs, so I’m xposting…

    Sometimes, while an update for a particular plugin might be rock solid, it might hinder the functionality of another plugin, so you end up having to roll that plugin back till you can fix the problem.
    That means you have to either download the previous version of that plugin, extract it, and then upload it via ftp, which could take a really long time.
    You could also upload the zip, and then use the web-based file manager to extract the file to overwrite the plugin update if your web host has that functionality, which would save some time, but it’s a bit more work.
    What if, prior to any update, a snapshot of your db was taken (optional) and a copy of the current version of whatever you were updating was backed up on the server – all automatically. That way if the update created a problem, you could just “rollback” or “un-update”, and the update would be quickly reversed.
    Maybe this is just me wanting to be lazy, but I think this would be a huge benefit to a lot of people, and I haven’t been able to find anything that does that. I’m pretty sure all the individual steps are doable, and I’ve seen several posts for at least the last 3 years, and the answer is always “no, you have to do it manually”
    Does anyone know of a reason why there isn’t a solution for this? (or if there is a solution that I just haven’t come across?)
    I’d totally be up for developing such a plugin if anyone else thought it would be worthwhile.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Heartily seconded; I’ve lost track of the times WP updates have broken a site. One-click rollback, bring it on!

    I don’t trust “one-click” anything. ??

    It should be easy to save a backup of the pre-update plugin, but you could easily run into issues if the update alters its database table structure (for those that use their own tables). The old plugin would not know how to undo the changes made by the new version so rollback function would have to deal with it. Could be tricky.

    My advice: Never update a live site, or a plugin, or a theme without running the update on a local server first– specially if it is a business site.

    Presumably you’d have to use the rollback plugin to manage all your updates, so it could ‘snapshot’ the site pre-update.

    Actually very difficult to test an update fully before rolling it out. Who has the time or inclination (or exhaustive testplan) to test every permutation/potential interaction? What would be *really* useful would be a plugin that tested it for you. Preferably before you updated…

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘WordPress Plugin/Theme/Core Update Rollback’ is closed to new replies.