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How to Deal with Update Issues in Astra Theme and Astra Pro Addon?

Updating your WordPress, theme or plugins can sometimes be a frustrating experience due to possible errors and issues that can affect your website.

What To Do Before Updating

Before updating, be it Astra Theme, Astra Pro addon, WordPress installation, or any other plugin on your website, please follow these steps as they should help your updates go smoothly:

Keep your auto-updates off – this includes WordPress, your Astra theme, and all plugins. Though it may be easier to have automatic updates, this can create issues with your website and even bring it down. To ensure that you have control over your updates, we would suggest keeping these turned off and doing your manual updates regularly.

Always make a backup before updating – before any update, you should make a backup of your website. Though the updates for the majority of themes and plugins are tested before being released, there is no guarantee that these will work perfectly in every situation. There is always a possibility of an issue arising from some plugins or theme updates, and having a backup will keep you safe from losing any data. If you end up with a hard-to-solve issue, you can always restore your website from your backup. Please check this article for more information on how to backup your website.

Avoid beta versions unless you know what you』re doing – though it may be tempting to test the newest version and features of plugins and themes as soon as they are available with the beta release, these are not stable versions and can cause additional problems. Thus, if you』re not an experienced user, it』s better to wait for a stable version. You can of course test beta versions on your test site or local environment.

Use staging environment – do all of your updates on your staging site. The staging site is the exact copy of your live (production) website where you can do all updates and tests without affecting the live environment. This will ensure that you can do your updates safely and that if any issues arise this will not affect your users or cause downtime. Once the updates are done and any potential issues are resolved, you can sync your staging environment with your live website and transfer the updated website. You can do this by using some of the staging plugins or manually using your localhost. Some hosts also offer the staging environment as part of their service. Please check this article for more information.

Common Issues After Updating

Clear your cache – sometimes though the update went well, it seems that the changes are not reflecting on your front end. Most often, this is related to the cached version of your website. Try clearing all of your caches – keep in mind that you should clear both your website cache and your browser cache, as well as server cache as sometimes your host may provide a server caching, or you might be using a content delivery network (CDN).

White Screen of Death – one of the most common WordPress errors that can happen after an update is for you to find yourself locked out of your website with only an empty white page showing on your screen or the 「There has been a critical error on your website」 massage. This is known as White Screen of Death. It problem can affect your whole website or just a part of it. Check this article for the instructions on how to fix this.

Issues Related to Updating Astra Theme and Astra Pro Addon

Are you facing issues while updating the Astra theme or Astra Pro Addon? We have listed down some issues users face and have provided the corresponding solution for the same.

Please note that if everything else fails, you can ultimately update the theme or plugin manually. You won』t lose any of your data or settings while updating manually. How to Manually Update the Theme and Plugin?

What Update Issue Are You Facing?

Update Notification Not AvailableThe Package Could Not Be InstalledPCLZIP ErrorUnable to Upload the Plugin from WordPress DashboardFatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of Xxxxxxx Bytes ExhaustedManually Update the Theme and Plugin via Dashboard

Update Notification Not Available

Sometimes users might not see any update notification for the Astra theme or Astra Pro Addon plugin. To fix this issue for the Astra Pro Addon plugin you need to make sure you have the license for the plugin active.

To re-authorize your license key, go to Appearance > Astra Options > Astra Pro License and paste the license key and click the Activate License button under your license key field. How to activate Astra Pro Addon license?

After that, visit the Updates page of the WordPress Dashboard and force check using the Check Again button a couple of times.

Or you can directly force check by visiting the following link a couple of times –

/wp-admin/update-core.php?force-check=1

This would display any updates if they are not being rendered for your plugins page or themes page.

Update the respective Astra theme and Astra Pro Addon and you will be on the latest versions.

The Package Could Not Be Installed

While trying to Upload the plugin are you seeing the following error – Package could not be installed. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet.

We have a detailed article on the same here.

PCLZIP Error

Are you seeing an error while updating the Astra Pro Addon plugin – Update Failed: The Package could not be installed. PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10): Unable to find End of Central Dir Record Signature.

This issue could be most probably due to zip format or due to the Server Disk Space issue.

We have a detailed article on the same here.

If the issue still persists, you can update the plugin manually to fix this issue, how?

Unable to Upload the Plugin from WordPress Dashboard

Are you on a live server and hosted on a server other than Windows? It could be possible that you do not have the correct permissions to upload the plugin.

So, to fix this issue you will need to contact your hosting service provider and ask them to make sure that you have the permissions to upload/remove/change files on the server through WordPress.

After your permissions have been updated you will be able to upload the plugin without any issues.

Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of Xxxxxxx Bytes Exhausted

This error could be due to numerous issues.

Mainly it could be due to the Memory Limit issue.

A quick fix for this problem could be by increasing your PHP memory limit. You can do that by adding this line to your wp-config.php file which can be found under your root WordPress folder, below the line. /* That』s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */ –

define(『WP_MEMORY_LIMIT』, 『256M』);

If you do not have access to the files you can get in touch with the server admin or hosting provider so that they can make the necessary changes.

Manually Update the Theme and Plugin via Dashboard

Apart from the above issues, if any of the above solutions don』t work, you can always manually update the theme or plugin via FTP.

And the same goes for the plugin via the WordPress Dashboard, for this, you will have to visit the wp-content > plugins.

After that, you can remove and replace the existing Astra Pro Addon folder with the Astra Pro Addons』 unzipped file. This will install the Astra Pro Addon plugin on your website. Now visit the WordPress dashboard and activate the plugin from the Plugins > Installed Plugins.

Note: You won』t lose any of your data or settings while doing the same. This is the same process WordPress adopts but we are doing it manually.

Standard server 404 page showing instead of custom 404 page

There are times when a specific page is not found. In such cases, we need to make sure that the 404.php appears before the user. This is a default function that WordPress does. WordPress looks for the 404.php page when it does not find the required page.
However, there are times when the server encounters such issues before WordPress notices. In such cases, you can still be sure that your server displays the 404.php template file by configuring your web server for custom 404 error handling.
In order to tell your web server to use the custom error files, you will have to edit the .htaccess file in the main directory (i.e. the place where your main index.php file resides) of your WordPress installation. If you do not have a .htaccess file or are not sure where to find it, you can refer to the article here.
To be sure that your server finds the 404 page, add the following line into your .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?error=404
The URL above /index.php is root-relative. This means that the forward slash begins with the root folder of your site. If WordPress is present in the subfolder or the subdirectory of your site』s root folder, named 『wordpress』, the line you should add to your .htaccess file is:
ErrorDocument 404 /wordpress/index.php?error=404
WARNING: If you are using custom permalink, the trick above does not work, see this.
Wish to read a little more about this? Here is an article you can refer to.

What is Astra Pro Addon?

Astra Pro Addon is a premium plugin that extends functionalities in the Astra theme. The core theme is clean, lean and mean to offer only features that the majority of our users would need. While Astra Pro Addon offers further customization options and other features.

Please refer to our main website to see the latest information on the Astra Pro Addon plugin.

To know more about Astra Pro Addon, refer to this article on Getting Started with Astra Pro Addon!

Footer Custom Text Helper Strings

In Footer Custom Text, a user can add any HTML content. Furthermore, Astra offers some helper strings that can be used to place some useful dynamic content, such as the current year, or title of the website.

More information below:

[current_year] -> This String prints Current Year.
[site_title] -> This String prints Current Site Title.
[theme_author] -> This String prints Theme name with It's author link.

Example

HTML in Custom Text:

On Front-end:

Note: Above mentioned strings are predefined constants in theme. They will not work as shortcode when used with page/post content.

How to Adjust the Width of Your Sidebar?

Astra allows you to customize everything on your website. In this article, we』ll see how easy it is to adjust the width of your sidebar.

Step 1 – Open the customizer, navigate to Sidebar.

Step 2 – You can change the width of the sidebar using the slider shown in the image below.

How to Disable or Change Position of the Featured Image?

Astra theme version 1.0.18 introduces a new option in the layout settings which offers you control the visibility of the featured images.

The options are provided for Blog / Archive pages as well as Single Posts and can be found in the customizer on locations as below:

Customizer – Blog – Blog / ArchiveCustomizer – Blog – Single Post

You can drag & drop the labels to switch the position of title & featured image; or simply click on the eye icon and disable it.

How do I manage margin between paragraphs?

Astra theme version 1.0.18 introduces a new option in the Typography which offers you control over spacing between paragraphs.

Just navigate to Customizer – Global > Typography > Base Typography where you will find the setting as below:

Just tweak the setting and get the perfect space between the paragraphs as you need.

Further Read – http://blog.fonts.com/2017/01/paragraph-spacing/

Where Does Astra Primary Color Setting Take Effect?

Astra offers a setting where you can set the main, default color that takes effect on several places.

To set the primary color, go to: Customizer – Global > Colors

The color that you set as primary is used for:

Links that you give from contentTo the background of the text when you select itBackground color to a buttonBackground color of the scroll to top iconBackground color of the hamburger menu in responsive modeTag cloud widget

Most of these elements above can have a different color from their respective settings.

For example, the background color of a button by default is taken from what you』ve set in the primary color. However, we offer a dedicated setting for you to change this in the customizer under Customizer – Global > Buttons.

Primary Color saves a lot of time as it gets applied to several areas without you having to set the color for every individual item.

How to Disable Header or Footer for a Landing Page or Post?

There might be times when you need full flexibility like a blank canvas on some pages / posts and do not want header / footer to appear. Astra allows you to disable these through the Astra Meta box settings of the specific page or post.

As you can see in the screenshot, you will find a meta box named Astra settings in your backend. You can disable the title, header or footer from here.

Note: If you are not able to see Astra Settings as shown above, you will need to enable this through screen options. Please refer this screenshot.

Increasing the PHP Memory Limit of Your Website

Have you ever come across an error that says: Fatal Error: Memory Size Exhausted? Or maybe your website just went white screen? This usually occurs when you install a new theme, plugin or upgrade your WordPress to the latest version. Or maybe the site is running just too slow?

The main cause of this error is that the PHP memory limit of your host is lesser than the process actually needs. In such cases, you will need to increase your host memory limit, so that the process gets completed. You can increase your host memory limit by following any of the five methods mentioned below.

1. Most Recommended: Just Contact Your HostIncreasing the PHP memory limit is complex and the process differs from hosts to hosts. So it is always better to get it done from someone who knows it well. So just get in touch with your hosting company and they will be happy to do it for you.

2. Increasing Memory Limit via PHP.ini fileMany small shared hosted servers do not allow users to access the PHP.ini file. If you are granted access, you can directly increase the memory limit through this file. If not, you can ask your host to allow you to create a duplicate PHP.ini file in your directory. The data or values in the duplicate file will override those in the original PHP.ini file. You can create a duplicate file named PHP.ini in the directory where your WordPress website is installed. If you wish to extend the limit to 256MB, you can enter the following line of code:

memory_limit = 256M;

3. Alternative to editing PHP.ini through wp-config.phpThis is another alternative to the PHP.ini method. Simply add the following line in the wp-config.php

ini_set('memory_limit','256M');

4. Changing memory Limit in wp-config.phpIn case you are not able to edit the PHP.ini file, you can use this method that helps increase memory limit through the wp-config.php. You can add the following line of code in your wp-config.php file.

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT','256M');

5. Modifying the .htaccess fileSome of you might have the .htaccess file where you can simply add a line of code to increase the memory limit.

php_value memory_limit 256M

P.S: 256M in the above code samples mean 256 MB. Feel free to change this to any appropriate number.