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Updating the Theme

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How do I Update the Theme? #

We strongly recommend keeping Basil up to date. Back up your website and theme folders completely so you have a restore point if anything goes wrong.

If you customized the parent Basil theme directly, those changes will be overwritten on update. Use a child theme for customizations instead.

Updating the theme using Envato Market (Automatic Updates) #

The Envato Market plugin allows you to access your Envato WordPress purchases from within your WordPress Dashboard.
It allows you to receive update notifications and update automatically with one click.

If you haven’t installed it yet, go to Appearance → Install Plugins.

You can also download it here: https://envato.github.io/wp-envato-market/

  1. Install and activate the plugin.
  2. Back up your website completely to make sure you have a restore point in case of any complications.
  3. Navigate to Envato Market, follow the instructions to generate a Global OAuth Personal Token, and enter the token in the field on the config page.
  4. You will see a notification circle and can update the theme when a new version is released.

That’s all.

Envato Market settings

Updating the theme using “Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades” #

You can also update via the third-party plugin Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades.

This plugin installs a new version as a fresh installation and can back up the existing theme to a package in the media library.

  1. Download, install, and activate the plugin.
  2. Back up your website completely.
  3. Go to ThemeForest and download the latest version of Basil.
  4. Unzip the download and locate basil.zip.
  5. Go to Appearance → Themes.
  6. Click Add New.
  7. Click Upload Theme.
  8. Choose the new basil.zip on your computer.
  9. Click Install Now.
  10. Click Activate.
Upload theme via WordPress admin

Update using FTP #

  1. Download the latest version of Basil from ThemeForest.
  2. Connect to your hosting via FTP or your host’s file manager.
  3. Unzip the download and upload the basil theme folder to wp-content/themes.
  4. Confirm overwriting the existing basil folder and its contents.
  5. Replacing all files can take 5–20 minutes. When finished, log into WordPress admin and go to Appearance → Themes. The version shown on the Basil theme card should match the latest release.

Updating bundled plugins #

A new Basil version may ship with updated versions of bundled plugins (for example Cooked Pro). A notification may appear after you update the theme.

We recommend updating bundled plugins to the latest version for full compatibility with Basil.

To update bundled plugins #

  1. Click Begin updating plugin in the admin notice, or go to Appearance → Install Plugins.
  2. Click Update for any plugins that need a new version.

If Cooked Pro was installed from plugins/cooked-pro.zip in your theme package, install the updated zip from the new Basil release the same way.

Quick checklist after updating #

  • Ensure Cooked and Cooked Pro are still installed and activated.
  • Clear any caching plugins or server cache.
  • Open Appearance → Customize and review your settings.

Troubleshooting #

If you see “Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again.” or “The link you followed has expired” when updating, your server’s PHP limits may be too low. Increase these values (ask your host if needed):

  1. upload_max_filesize — greater than 32M
  2. post_max_size — greater than 32M
  3. max_execution_time — greater than 120

Then try the update again.