It is important to make sure that WordPress, WooCommerce, your plugins and your theme are updated to the latest version. New versions include improvements, new features, tweaks and bug fixes. Simply put, updates give you both improvements and increased security.

As many users of WordPress and WooCommerce know, there are times when you update a plugin and it breaks your site. It’s not that common that a site breaks completely, but even smaller things can cause disruptions. Therefore, it can be a bit terrifying to click that “Update” button. Because what if something happens?

Rollback

The best way to avoid major issues on your site is to have a staging site set up. There you can update everything and make sure there are no breaking changes or other mishaps before you update your production site. But a staging site can also need to roll back.

WPBeginner has written an extensive article that covers pretty much everything you need to know about how to roll back WordPress, themes and plugins.

How to Rollback WordPress – Undo WordPress Updates (Easy Way)

Staging environment

What is a staging environment? It is a copy of your website, installed so that only you can access it. Your staging site should include the latest functioning setup of your production site. Several web hosts offer one-click installations for staging features via the control panel. If your hosting provider does not offer this, you can take a closer look at plugins such as Duplicator and WP Staging.

When you have a staging site, you can update your themes, plugins and system without the risk of breaking your WooCommerce store, for example.

We have written more about this in our article Keep WooCommerce and plugins updated, without worries.

Download a previous version of a plugin from WordPress.org

If you need to install an earlier version of a plugin that is hosted on WordPress.org, you can download it directly from the plugin’s page.

1. Go to the plugin’s page on WordPress.org.
   Example format:
   https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-slug/
2. In the right-hand sidebar, click Advanced View.
3. Scroll down to the section called Advanced Options.
4. Under Previous Versions, select the version you want to download from the dropdown menu.
5. Click Download.

You can then upload the downloaded ZIP file via WordPress Admin → Plugins → Add Plugin → Upload Plugin.

Plugins not hosted on WordPress.org

Some of our plugins aren’t hosted on WordPress.org, so the steps above don’t apply to them. Instead, create a support ticket and let us know which plugin and version you need – we’ll send you a download link.

Where possible, test the rollback on your staging site before applying it to your live store.