1. Minimum Requirements
  2. What to expect (important warnings)
  3. Backup your site
  4. Upload and activate Photography 2.0
  5. Regenerate images (optional)
  6. Flickr authentication (optional)
  7. Check your site

Minimum Requirements

In order to take advantage of the latest improvements to WordPress, Photography 2.0 requires WordPress 3.4 or higher.

What to expect

Photography 2.0 makes some slight changes that depart from the Photography 1.x theme. We want you to be aware of these changes before making the decision to upgrade to the latest version of the theme. Note: the only way to rollback to the previous version of the theme is if you backup your site prior to completing this tutorial.

The following changes are expected with this update:

  • When you update to Photography 2.0, your existing Photography 1.x child theme customizations will no longer work. They won’t work because all the CSS and template code in Photography 2.0 is brand new. If you have significantly customized your Photography 1.x theme and want to keep your styling, we recommend not updating to Photography 2.0.
  • Flickr galleries will not work until you re-authenticate with Flickr. Until you re-authenticate, nothing will display on your Flickr gallery pages.
  • Galleries are now Posts of the “gallery” post format. You can access your galleries through the Posts menu.
  • Autoplay slideshow is now a global, not per gallery option.
  • The “Disable the Gallery title and description (appears below the gallery)” and “Disable image descriptions (appears in the top left corner of each image)” options are no longer available for individual galleries. Instead this data is shown if it is available and hidden if not.

Again, we cannot stress enough that some of these changes are irreversible and it is extremely important that you backup your theme files and database before proceeding to update your theme.

Backup your site

Before beginning the upgrade, it is important to backup your site. Photography 2.0 has been completely rewritten and requires some changes to your theme data. In order to make sure the update is a success, it is extremely important to backup your database and current theme files before proceeding to the next step.

We recommend reading the WordPress Codex entry about backups, as well as considering an integrated backup solution, such as VaultPress.

Upload and activate Photography 2.0

  1. Install Photography 2.0 as you would install a new theme.
  2. Be sure to activate the theme titled Photography, not the theme titled Photography PRO.
  3. Upon activation, an upgrade process will execute that is completely automated and invisible to you. Once the upgrade is completed, your site will be ready to use with the updated theme!

Regenerate images

The Homepage and Gallery templates are optimized for images of specific sizes. While these pages will work with your existing images, the pages will look much better with images of the correct size. This step is optional, but note that your Gallery page layout may appear poorly styled without performing this step. We recommend that you view your Gallery page to determine whether or not you think you should do this step.

To generate the proper image sizes, follow these steps:

  1. Install the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin
  2. Go to Tools → Regen. Thumbnails
  3. Click the Regenerate All Thumbnails button
  4. Resizing is completed when the “All done!” message appears.

Flickr authentication

If you previously used Flickr galleries in Photography, they will continue to work; however, you first need to re-authenticate your account. Photography 2.0 uses a newer version of the Flickr API, which requires this re-authentication step. If you never used Flickr with Photography, you can skip this step.

To re-authenticate, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Appearance → Theme Options
  2. Click Flickr
  3. Your Flickr API Consumer Key and Consumer Secret should already be entered. If not, obtain and enter these details.
  4. Click the Authenticate button
  5. You will be redirected to Flickr. If you are logged in to Flickr, click the “OK I’LL AUTHORIZE IT” button. If you are not logged in, sign in and then click the “OK I’LL AUTHORIZE IT” button.
  6. You should be redirected back to your WordPress site and see the “You have authenticated a Flickr account!” message displayed.

Check your site

Now that you have upgraded your site, it is important to look through all of your pages to ensure that the update has not broken your site. Most smaller issues can likely be fixed in the WordPress Administration Panel. If there are major issues, we recommend restoring from your backup.