After creating the staging server, plugins on this environment were updated one by one. “Pirate Forms” which was throwing a front-end error was replaced for “WPForms”, and a site-wide scrub for outdated content commenced.
After the site’s content was updated, it was time to carefully begin the theme update. A backup of the site’s theme and database was created and safely stored on dropbox. The client wanted to update from Zerif lite to Neve, which meant the new site would use the front-end builder, “Elementor”. The old theme’s pages were subsequently converted to Elementor templates, which were then adjusted to be responsive and match the original design as closely as possible.