Important Update Info

With each new Avada update comes incredible new features, new options, code improvements, and fixes. Our team takes the utmost care in creating updates and ensuring everything is fully tested, both internally and by a group of beta customers. It is important that we communicate to our customers any key items to consider when updating. This post is dedicated to relaying that information to you anytime a new major version of Avada is released.

This is disclosed in our Changelog and our Blog Post help file.

Like WordPress and any entity that develops software, we understand that security is not absolute and is a continuous process managed as such. We do our best to prevent security issues as proactively as possible, as we do not assume they’ll never come up. Our responsibility is to quickly take care of them and work to get our customers notified and prepared. This is why we recommend keeping your website and plugins up-to-date and maintained at all times.

Keeping your website up to date is vital for maintaining its security, performance, and reliability. Updates help protect your site from known vulnerabilities, fix bugs that can cause errors or instability, and ensure compatibility between WordPress, Avada, and plugins.

Before you update your website it is strongly recommend that you backup of the site. The essential components to backup are → The Database:​​ Contains all your website content, including posts, pages, comments, user data, and plugin settings → Files (wp-content folder):​ Includes the Avada folder, plugins, and media library uploads → Configuration Files: It is recommended to include the servers wp-config.php and .htaccess files, though these are sometimes handled separately.

If you are not familiar with how to do this yourself, or if your hosting provider does not provide a turnkey solution, there are various plugins available that automate that process for you, such as:

When an update becomes available, the theme files should be the first to be updated. You should see that an update is available in your WordPress Dashboard (WordPress Dashboard > Updates).

You can follow the update prompt there, and the latest version of Avada will automatically get installed.

If you are using a child theme with Avada, please switch to the parent theme before the update to avoid any errors during the update. More detail is provided below.

If you choose to update Avada manually, e.g., using FTP, please make sure to remove the previous Avada folder before adding the new updated folder, or you could end up with WP path issues, etc.

Also, do not rename the theme folder, which will change the path name. WordPress stores menus,  widgets, and some other settings by folder path. If you are already facing this issue, rename your theme folder to what it was before, and your settings, menus, and widgets will be restored.

Once you have completed the Avada update, you will see a WordPress Dashboard notification indicating that the required plugins must be updated next. Follow the onscreen prompts to complete the plugin updates. First, update the Avada Core plugin and then the Avada Builder plugin.

If you dismiss or do not see the prompt, you can go to Avada > Maintenance > Plugins & Add-Ons page and install the plugins from there. Always use the latest versions of the Avada Core and Avada Builder plugins.

If you copied PHP template files from the parent theme to the child theme and modified them with custom code, be aware that outdated code in the child theme can cause display issues or even fatal errors.

Thus, it is recommended that you switch to the parent theme before the update. Once the parent theme is updated (Step 2), you can switch back to your child theme and confirm it runs without issues. If not, please update your child theme’s PHP template files and custom code to ensure it is compatible with the latest version of Avada.

If you are using Avada’s critical CSS feature, it is best practice to clear and rebuilt the critical CSS after every major update. On big updates, Avada will auto-clear it and prompt you to rebuild the CSS.

It is always recommended to reset all caching systems after an update, including Avada cache, your browser, plugin (e.g. W3 Total Cache), and server cache. Visual issues may happen and more often than not, its caused by caches, and they need to be emptied. Each browser allows you to remove cookies, history and other data.

Some hosting providers have server-side cache systems installed to optimize the speed of content delivery, please clear any server-side cache or ask your host to do it. This is also true for setups using CloudFalre or similar services. View our general cache information that describes the various forms of cache and how to clear them.

To reset all Avada caches, click the Reset Avada Caches button that you can find by going to Avada > Options > Performance > Dynamic CSS & JS.