I’m going to walk you through the process of downgrading a WordPress plugin to an earlier version in this article.
What is downgrading a Plugin?
Downgrading a plugin means going back to an earlier and older release.
When you should downgrade a Plugin?
You might want to momentarily downgrade a WordPress plugin to a previous version for a variety of reasons:
- The most recent WordPress core upgrade does not work with the plugin.
- The plugin and your current theme are incompatible.
- Conflicts with other plugins are brought on by the plugin.
Why you should not downgrade a Plugin
Downgrading a plugin should be considered temporary, much as going back to an earlier version of the WordPress core.
The developers frequently address bugs in the plugin code with each new release.
Returning to an earlier release could expose your website to known security flaws, increasing the risk of a hacker taking control of your site.
Because of this, it’s always advised to maintain your WordPress website up to date and to only briefly revert to an earlier version of the core, theme, or plugins.
How to Manually Downgrade a WordPress Plugin
Steps:
- Click on Advance View on the plugin’s homepage in the WordPress repository.
- Choose the version you wish to download by clicking Development Version at the bottom of the page as you go down.
- Click on Download
- Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin from your WordPress dashboard, upload the zipped file you just downloaded, and then click Install Now.
- Alternatively, you can use FTP to upload the folder containing the unzipped file to WP Content > Plugins.
How to Downgrade a WordPress Plugin Using Plugin
Plugin Choice: WP Rollback
Steps:
- Click on Plugins > Add New from your WordPress dashboard.
- In the search box, enter “WP Rollback”
- Next to the plugin, you want to downgrade under Installed Plugins, click Rollback.
- Select the version you want to downgrade to.
- Click Rollback
Conclusion
So you might be asking yourself, why would I want to downgrade a WordPress plugin? Well, this might not be the case for everyone, but there are situations where this could be useful. For example, if you have a plugin that is causing issues on your site and you can’t get in touch with the plugin developer, you can downgrade to an older version of your plugin to try to fix the issue. It can also be useful if you’re doing a plugin update and it’s looking like something is not going well and you want to go back to your previous version. This way, you aren’t stuck.
