Skip to the main content

Updating

When there is a new version of Webal Blocks, you install the new package over the old one, and you do not remove the old one first. This page explains how to do it and what is kept.

How to update

  1. Make a backup of your site.
  2. Get the new package file, which is a zip file, as it was for the first install.
  3. Sign in to the administrator area as a Super User.
  4. Open System, then Install, then Extensions.
  5. Choose the tab Upload Package File.
  6. Drag the zip file onto the box, or choose Or browse for file.
  7. Read the messages that Joomla shows. Webal Blocks may add messages about the menu layout files. See below.
  8. Open the Webal Blocks Dashboard and check that the version number is the new one.

The package is made to install over an earlier version, so the update uses the same screen as the first install.

For your web host The package manifest has no update server address. Joomla's own Update screen does not list Webal Blocks, which is why each new version is installed from its zip file.

What is kept

We installed the same package again over a site where we had changed some settings, and these stayed exactly as we had left them:

  • the Webal Blocks Options,
  • the plugin's switch (on or off) and its own settings,
  • the settings of the child theme style and which style is the default.

The tables that hold your Menu profiles and Mega menus are only created when they are missing, so an update does not empty them.

A plugin that you switched off stays switched off after an update.

The menu layout files

Webal Blocks copies four small menu layout files into your template, and on the Dashboard each of them has a version. When a new package needs a newer file, the update brings the old one up to date for you, as long as all of this is true:

  • the file was made by Webal Blocks,
  • you have not edited it,
  • the Option Keep the Webal menu layouts up to date when Webal Blocks is updated is on, which it is by default.

The update never adds a layout that is not there, and it never touches a file that Webal Blocks did not make or a file that you changed. If such a file is older than the new one, you get a warning with its path, and the update tells you what it did in messages.

If you switch the Option off, the Dashboard shows the layouts as Out of date after an update. You can then press Update beside a layout, or Update all, to bring them up to date yourself.

If a layout cannot be refreshed, you get a warning with the file's path and the reason. Your menu keeps working in the meantime, because an old layout file still calls Webal Blocks.

After the update

  • Open the Dashboard and read Things to look at.
  • Look at a few pages of your site, to check that your blocks still show.