How to Update Your Custom Thinkific Theme

This guide will show you how to update your theme after making code customizations, following our best practices guide.

In this article:

About Custom Themes

Document Theme Customizations

How to Update Your Theme

Frequently Asked Questions

About Custom Themes

We highly recommend that you look into hiring a web developer when making any edits to your theme code unless you are very familiar with HTML and CSS. You can always check out our Experts Marketplace for developers who are familiar with our system to create custom coded solutions! The Thinkific Store on Fivver and Upwork.com are also popular options.

Errors within code can break the functionality of your site and we do not provide support for code customizations, which is why we highly recommend seeking the assistance of a developer. You can learn about editing theme code here: Custom Themes (For Developers).

Document your Theme Customizations

When updating your Thinkific theme, any code customizations you have made will be overwritten and will need to be manually reapplied. We recommend creating a reference document or spreadsheet that details how you've edited your Thinkific Theme. This will make the following process quicker and less error-prone, as you can quickly reference the document and copy/paste as needed. This also allows for Theme updates to be done by other members of your team. 

A few examples of what you can include in your reference guide are:

• File Name (The Thinkific Theme file that has been edited)
• The lines in which the code has been edited (ex. lines 24 - 32)
• Details of the customization (what the changes are, why they were made, and etc)
• The snippet of code, or a link to the code (depending on the size of the code, it may make sense to link to a file)

How to Update Your Theme

These are the best practice steps we recommend taking in order to update your theme without affecting your students. They can be adjusted as you need to fit your own internal processes.

In the steps below, we will recommend duplicating your theme as a backup.  Note that only the master theme (original theme installed) can be updated, a duplicated theme cannot have its version updated, so you should generally avoid using a duplicated theme for your primary site.

Update a Master Theme

1. Go to Channels
2. Select Theme Library and find your master theme
3. Click the Update button 
   The button will only appear if there is an available update.

Update a Duplicate Theme

1. Go to Channels
2. Select Theme Library and find your master theme in the "My installed themes" section below your published theme.
3. Duplicate the theme by clicking on the ellipses (three-dot menu) and clicking Duplicate
   
4. Your duplicated theme will appear under "My installed themes" and will have the name of the theme and "(Copy 1)" as the title 
5. Publish the duplicated theme to ensure your users aren't affected and can safely begin the update process. 
6. Once the duplicated theme has been published, locate the master theme under "My installed themes", click the ellipses (three-dot menu) and select Update Available
   
7. After the master theme has been updated, reapply your theme customizations to the newly updated theme
8. Prior to publishing the updated theme, preview your theme to ensure everything is functioning correctly
9. When ready, click Publish

Rename Your Duplicated Theme to Help with Version Control

By default, your duplicated Thinkific Theme will include a "(Copy #)" depending on how many times you have duplicated the theme. We always recommend renaming the duplicated theme to follow a more structured naming system to easily manage your theme versions moving forward. 

Below are the common naming systems we see:

• Theme Name - Month/Year: Add the month and year in which you last updated the theme, this will let the team know that this theme was last used at this period. 
• Theme Name - Version Number: If you're making changes more often, adding a version number may make more sense. For example, if you recently updated your Empire Theme you could name it "Empire - V 1.0"

Frequently Asked Questions