question about customizing themeforest themes

Hi all,

there are several themeforest themes that i'm considering purchasing (avada, x-the theme, 7, etc). however, I am concerned about the fact that they don't have an automatic upgrade through the wordpress dashboard like most themes do. they all seem to say that in order to upgrade, you must uninstall the theme, and then install the newest version of the theme. wouldn't this mean that i would lose all customizations that i made?

i like the themeforest theme layouts better than those for the genesis framework, for example, but at least with the child themes on the genesis framework you do not lose any customizations when a newer version is available.

i have genesis, and many child themes, but i'm not thrilled with them. i have not yet purchased anything from ThemeForest. could somebody who has please let me know whether the upgrade process is as painful as it sounds like it will be? and whether there is a way to keep your customizations?

sorry about the no-caps on everything - i'm using voice recognition to write this, and it doesn't automatically put it in but with my rsi, it's really the best way for me to get anything done...

thanks for any and all help that anyone can provide!

You can create a child theme for any Wordpress theme.

I'd send you a link but my laptop is slow af at the moment. Google search something along the lines of "how to create a wordpress child theme"

I have purchased many themes and plugins from Themeforest and even though automatic updates would be nice, the manual update process isn't too difficult. You can also get notified via email whenever a new update comes out. I'd go ahead and make the purchase.

Hope that helps. Voice recognition software seems to be working good by the way

Hey sookie,
I bought a wordpress theme on themeforest already and it is quite easy to install new updates.
I don't remember uninstalling my theme when I upgraded, I just used filezilla to connect on my wordpress (account) server and replaced the theme folder.
I also kept everything I made too when updating.

Thanks to both of you for sharing your experiences and tips! Lethalshot - which themeforest theme was it that you were able to update w/o losing your customizations?

I did find that the WP codex was helpful in learning HOW to create a child theme:

But that child theme is still dependent on the Parent theme so if the theme upgrade changes the parent significantly, wouldn't that mean the child theme might not work?

Thanks again!