My site suddenly has premium styles

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemsbooktalk · Member ·

    I’ve been using the Nook theme on my blog site ever since I created it at the end of 2024 (with a Personal plan) – over the past few days I’m suddenly being told that my site ‘includes premium styles that are only visible to visitors after upgrading to the Premium plan or higher’. However, I haven’t made changes to any of the styles, and it looks like the Nook theme itself has been changed to have different fonts, colour palette etc. and now if I want to keep what I had before (which is what the Nook theme looked like when I chose it), I suddenly have to pay extra for that privilege.

    Is this really the case, or is there an error with that theme causing this problem?

    Thanks.

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    josefhtest · Member ·

    Hi @gemsbooktalk,

    That sounds odd — especially since you haven’t made any recent changes to your site’s styling.

    What likely happened is that the Nook theme received an update that introduced new premium style options. This may have automatically applied styles that now require a Premium plan or higher to remain active — even if you didn’t intentionally change anything.

    You can remove the premium styles by following these steps:

    1. Open your site in the Site Editor (Appearance > Editor).
    2. At the top of the screen, you should see a banner with three options: Upgrade, Remove, and Learn more.
    3. Click Remove premium styles to strip out any styles that require an upgrade.
    4. Hit Save in the top-right corner to apply the changes.

    Once you do this, your site should continue to use the free styles available under your current plan.

    If you don’t see that banner or if things still don’t look right afterward,let us know to take a closer look.

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemsbooktalk · Member ·

    Hi Josef,

    Thanks for this clarification. I shall have to consider whether I do want to remove the premium styles, or pay the upgrade fee – I would prefer to keep the style I have now, but that’s what’s now going to cost me money, since they’ve updated the Nook theme. I don’t especially like the look of the updated theme, and am somewhat annoyed that this update means I’ll now have to pay to keep what was free to me before.

    Thanks again for your assistance.

    Gem

  • Unknown's avatar
    2020testjj · Member ·

    Hi folks,

    What likely happened is that the Nook theme received an update that introduced new premium style options. This may have automatically applied styles…

    This is very odd. I have Nook active on my site at 2020testjj.wordpress.com and I don’t see any change to the base theme or to the theme’s demo site.

    For the sake of testing, I changed my text style to Italic from Regular in the Site Editor>Styles>Typography>Appearance and when I saved the changes and viewed my site, I was greeted with a banner like the one below

    As per that banner the only person who can see any Style changes is the site owner, unless the site is upgraded to at least Premium plan. Anyone visiting the site would see the base theme. @gemsbooktalk I don’t see any Styles in use on your site.

    However, clicking the “Remove premium styles” link in that banner took me to the support document on how to reset the Style changes, but the banner mentioned in No. 2 in Staff’s reply or under No. 4 in that support document to upgrade or remove styles doesn’t appear. I had to go to Appearance>Editor>Styles>Typography>Appearance and reset the text style manually.

    So, I’m almost sure it’s not a global theme change/update, but I could be wrong.

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemsbooktalk · Member ·

    Hi,

    Thanks for your message. Would you suggest I contact WordPress directly to address this? The way the Nook theme looks now (as on your site and the theme’s demo site) isn’t how it looked when I chose it several months ago – it looked like this (screenshot of my my site from within my interface), and has done without any issue up until the last few days, when I started seeing the banner warnings talking about premium styles:

    As you can see, colours and fonts are different – and it appears I’m now being told these are premium styles, when as you say I’ve never applied styles, and to me it appears that WordPress have made wholesale changes to the theme behind the scenes, meaning I can’t now continue to have the same aesthetic without paying extra…

    Gem

  • Unknown's avatar
    2020testjj · Member ·

    FWIW-I haven’t noticed any changes to the Nook theme since activating it on my own site quite some time ago, but looking in the Wayback Machine from 17 July 2025, your site at that time looked like your screenshot above.

    If you have an upgrade plan that gives you direct access to Support, then contact them by following this guide https://wordpress.com/support/help-support-options/ You can also point them to this forum thread.

  • nigeljoy · Staff ·

    Hi @gemsbooktalk, I suggest that you contact our support directly through options available here: https://wordpress.com/help/contact

    Happiness Engineers would be there to look further into your site and clarify your questions.

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