Changing themes and switching back to old theme

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  professionalbookworm418 · Member · Aug 20, 2015 at 2:24 am

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  Hi everyone,

  I’m thinking of switching my theme to Visual (my current theme is Sketch). But I’m just wondering, if I switch to Visual, then decide that I don’t like it and want to go back to Sketch, will it save all my old settings and content that I had before?

  For example, will it save my Portfolio page settings or will I have to go back and reset everything how I had it before?

  Thanks so much in advance!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  kokkieh · Staff · Aug 20, 2015 at 9:51 am

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  Hi there. Theme switches can be a bit unpredictable and your old settings might get lost. Additionally, if the new theme is missing widget areas you were using on the old theme your widgets might be moved to the Inactive Widgets section of the Widgets page and you’ll have to add them back after the theme switch.

  I’d recommend you rather create a second, private blog you can use as a test blog. Then import some of your content over there, set up your widgets and customisations to make it a mirror of your main site. Then you can use that to test out themes and tweaking customisations without messing up your blog itself. Once you’re happy with the look of your test site, you can then change the theme of your main site and just copy the customisations over.

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  professionalbookworm418 · Member · Aug 21, 2015 at 10:14 pm

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  Thanks for your advice! I did go ahead and create a second test blog. It looks like WordPress does save certain things, like my background photo, fonts, and widgets, but not others, like my menu settings.

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  thesacredpath · Member · Aug 22, 2015 at 3:19 am

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  Your menus should be safe and saved, but you may have to reapply the location(s) for those menus at Appearance > Menus