The title basically sums up what I want to know.

I am designing a blog for our website design company. I was installing Atahualpa, as I usually do to start with, when Montezuma came up in the WP theme installer. Out of curiosity I installed it, and it looks much better, and the code is significantly lighter. I am very impressed.

So the one thing holding me back from using this on our project is the updating problem. In Atahualpa it would wipe out all customizations. Is updating this theme going to also over-right all the options, and settings? I am worrying because it is such a new theme, and does not have all the bugs worked out yet. So updating might be the only option at some point.

Thank you in advance!

I need to comment on what you said by all theme customizations being wiped out by an upgrade. Only images that are uploaded and changed to theme files would get wiped out during an upgrade. All CSS and settings you put in the theme options are preserved in an upgrade as they are all stored in the database.

Is there a way around the images being deleted? Like storing them outside the theme folder? Also, what do you mean "...changes to theme files would get wiped out during an upgrade." Are you talking about the PHP files, ex. 'header.php'? We often need to add divs or other tags to those files for customization. So any changes i make to PHP files will be wiped out during an update?

Do you have any suggestions how to transfer PHP file customization? Would it be as simple as backing up all the files that I have changed and then pasting them back into those files after updating?

Thanks!

You can store many of the images in folders that won't get overwritten and just adjust the paths in the theme options. With regards to Montezuma there are some changes in the works to simplify the back end but upgrades should not be too big a deal.

So folders that WONT get over written means all folders outside the Montezuma theme folder on the server? So if we make custom image paths in template files, during an update those would be wiped out, correct? So we should keep a log of where those paths are in the CSS, and PHP files, so we can put them back in after an update? Or, are all of the changes to the CSS preserved after an update?

Thanks!

I am still getting up to speed with Montezuma. My understanding is that any changes made withing the theme options should be preserved. If you edit a theme file directly those changes would get overwritten during an upgrade as they would with most any theme.

What do you mean "theme options"?

If I login to WP and go to:
Appearance > Montezuma Options > CSS Files > content.css

And I make a change to this file, then save it. Is that considered a "theme option" which will be preserved, or is that considered "editing a theme file directly"?

That is a theme option. If you go to appeances->editor and select a theme file...say function.php, and make a change, that is a theme file and an upgrade will wipe it out.

the theme options will be fine.

Great! That is what I needed to know!

Thanks for all the help!