Retired theme, full space – what to do?
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My blog has, after many years, used 99% of the free space. Since I know that Duotone is a retired theme I don’t know what to do if I want to continue. As I understand it, there is no way to just continue by paying and expanding, because the theme is too old.
My blog with all the photos is like a diary. I want to keep it, but since the theme is at risk of crashing, I want to know how to handle it. Can I export the blog with all content, appearance and comments? Or can it remain on Wp without the risk of being changed or lost?
I’m trying to find a new photo theme but I’m lost. Duotone is minimalistic and the archive is ingenious with an image for each post. Are there similar easy-to-manage minimalist themes? I hope someone can help me so I can continue “flying with you”!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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As I understand it, there is no way to just continue by paying and expanding, because the theme is too old.
As I also have a retired theme I am curious as to where you saw this info. I thought that as long as you don’t move away from your retired theme to another you can continue using it indefinitely. I don’t see that upgrading to a Starter plan would change your site in any visible way or have any effect on the theme you are currently using. Does it? I would hope an upgrade would give you the no ads option and more storage and the option (not compulsary) of a custom domain address.
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I’ve been told a couple of times at least that the theme might crash because it doesn’t update and that I should find a new theme.
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I really need some advice, I don’t know what to do, I want to continue blogging and at the same time not lose the content of my old blog.
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Here’s what I mentioned earlier
@abjag if you like the display of Duotone even without the colorful background per image, technically you can continue to use it with the understanding that at some point it will likely break with a new update to WordPress.com.
You mentioned in the other forum thread, the Duotone theme stopped generating a background color to match the colors of your photo and that the image was being duplicated in each post. Currently I only see a single image and the colorful background has returned at least to your site’s front page.
Again, you can continue to use Duotone for as long as you want and it works for you. Retired themes such as Duotone are only updated for security issues. AFAIK, there isn’t another theme currently available that gives you the unique archive that Duotone has (but I also haven’t looked at every available theme).
Here’s more information on Retired Themes https://wordpress.com/support/themes/retired-themes/
As far as storage space, if you’ve run out of space on the free plan, upgrading to the Starter plan will give you more space to upload new images. As @themagicrobot pointed out, there are other advantages to the Starter plan as well.
Here’s more info on the Starter plan: https://wordpress.com/support/plan-features/starter-plan/
Let us know if you have other questions about this.
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If I understand correctly, I can continue to use Duotone if I upgrade it, but it can break anytime with changes on Wp? But if I choose a different theme, start a new blog and link to the old one, do I still risk losing the old one, or can it stay as it is? I don’t want the whole look to change over time, because people have often commented on the colors and if I want to use it as a diary, it will be strange if it suddenly changes and there are no background colors, for example.
Or, as I asked before: is there a way for me to save the blog, download it, as a security?
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Let’s take this one by one. You said
If I understand correctly, I can continue to use Duotone if I upgrade it, but it can break anytime with changes on Wp?
You can continue to use your current theme and blog and upgrade to get more storage space. Yes, Retired themes can eventually break with updates to the WordPress.com platform.
But if I choose a different theme, start a new blog and link to the old
one, do I still risk losing the old one, or can it stay as it is?If you change themes on your current blog, you will not be able to go back and use Duotone.
If you start a new blog, you’ll need to choose a new theme from the Theme Showcase.
Adding a new blog doesn’t delete the old blog nor change the old blog’s theme. You can link to the old blog from the new one.
Just noting, also, that new free blogs have 1GB of storage space.
is there a way for me to save the blog, download it, as a security
You can Export your website contents and media as a backup by following these guides:
https://wordpress.com/support/export/
https://wordpress.com/support/export-your-media-library/
Hope that helps you with your decision.
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Let me add one more thing.
If you decide to upgrade your current blog to the Starter plan, and then you find that the Duotone theme no longer works, you can create a new blog and have Support transfer your upgrade from your old blog to your new blog. The existing content on your old blog would still be available, but you wouldn’t be able to upload new content on your old blog.
Hope that also helps.
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Thank you for your help Justjennifer! I think I’ll do an upgrade and postpone the new theme decision. And from what I understand, it is not easy or even possible for me to export the blog and keep everything as it currently looks on the blog.
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Hello again, upgrading will give you that extra space you need as well as removing all WordPress.com ads. As @themagicrobot mentioned, using a custom domain is optional.
But I’m not certain I understand what you said about exporting. All exporting does is create a machine-readable backup file with all your text content (posts, pages, comments, tags, categories, etc.) and the media export gives you a backup file with all your media files. Those backup files don’t have an impact on how your blog displays.
If those support guides were unclear in English, you can read them in a number of other languages by using the drop down menu at the top of the support guide.
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What I mean is: If I export the blog, does it export in two parts, one without images and the other with all the images that are in the media archive? Or are only the images in the blog posts exported? In the archive I sometimes also have pictures that did not make it into the blog post, although lately I have tried to remove them in order not to use up the space. If the images do not accompany the post, it is difficult to get a grasp of what a post looked like. I don’t think I’ll post it anywhere else, I just want it as a journal, a memory I can browse, on my computer if the retired blog theme ever stops working. But maybe it’s not possible to do that? Or is there another, easier solution.
I will try to read about the export again, but I sometimes feel confused by too much information that may not be crystal clear to non-computer engineer users. So I thank you again for your explanations and your willingness to try to help me.
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@abjag please ignore the spam reply just above.
You said:
If I export the blog, does it export in two parts, one without images and the other with all the images that are in the media archive?
The export file of your text content (posts, pages, etc.) contains links to the images that appear in them, but not the images themselves. So if you open that XML export file in a text editor, you’ll see a lot of code. The file is not intended to be a “journal” you can browse and read as you describe. It is a file that you can import to a different WordPress.com site or anywhere else that supports uploading XML files. As far as I know, the XML export file itself does not include information about the theme used.
The Media Library export includes everything you have uploaded to your Media Library, whether you’ve used it on your site or not. (Be cautious about cleaning “unused” files from the Media Library as once a file is deleted, it cannot be recovered.
I hope that helps explain.
If you are interested in creating something you can browse offline, there are Blog to Book services that can generate books or PDFs from your posts. I don’t have any experience with them, so cannot recommend a particular service.
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