Far too easy to accidentally change theme

[Paul Annett]

I've done a lot of advanced customisation on the commercial Ning site I'm creating.

When in the 'appearance' page, a rogue mouse-click seems to have accidentally clicked a theme thumbnail before heading to the 'advanced' bit to customise the CSS.

Nowhere did it warn me "hey, you're about to change themes and wipe all your customisation settings" - I hadn't realised I'd accidentally done so! So anyway, literally days of hard work customising the theme go down the pan, unless Ning can somehow revert my network to how it looked yesterday (fingers crossed).

Angry and frustrated.

Paul

[Deighv]

I experienced the same problem ....... once. Now I keep a current copy of all my Advanced CSS and edited Ning pages/modules in a text file on my comp so if something goes awry restoring it isn't so painful :) It WOULD be nice if an "Are you sure?" warning was given before changing themes though.

[Paul Annett]

Yes, an "are you sure?" warning is a no-brainer on an action as destructive as this.

[Paul Annett]

I spoke to Ning about this and they've said they will change it. They also kindly sent me backups of my old CSS, so I could restore the customisation at jonathanescapes.com

[Paul Annett]

Jeez, just noticed how confusing the threading order is on these forums... new replies to the topic appear at the bottom, but new threaded replies to replies appear at the top of the threaded view.

Might have to remove the threaded 'Reply to this' buttons on my forum and just have one long list of replies.

[TimG]

I've had this same ridiculous thing happen to me several times, and on none of these occasions do I recall (even inadvertently) clicking any of the pre-packaged themes. Though more than once what my network's appearance changed to resembled the "Denim" theme. Boy, did it take me a long time to put everything back the way it was.
I brought the "issue" up to Ning via email to their Help crew, who were most appreciative of the feedback. Like you, I proposed a "Please don't do this until I click OK" kinda remedy.
I also wish we had a built-in facility, as Creators, to warehouse all our Text Box code, instead of having to keep it stashed in (Windows) Notepad! But that's life for any programmer, I guess.

KEEP A COPY OF EVERY SETTING, CSS mod, AND TEXT BOX code! :-)

[Derek]

This happened to me yesterday, ugh...
I didn't even click on one of the themes, I clicked inside one of the color boxes before they loaded and everything was gone.

[surfpirate]

I've had this happen more times than I care to admit. I get impatient waiting for the page to load and inadvertently "click" and accidently reset to a whole new theme!

Smartest thing I've done has been to create a "mirror" Ning site that I use as my "staging" area. I test EVERYTHING in THAT site before making changes in my "production" site. If I don't like the changes I am making in my "mirror staging" site, it is sometimes easier to copy changes (CSS, text boxes, everything) from my production site back over to my staging site and just start over.

Another thing that irks me ..... nowhere can I find the current "theme" I am using identified in the appearance section. All of the fonts are identified, etc., but nowhere does it seem to identify that the current theme in use is the "Dusty" theme. Now of course I backup everything .... custom CS, theme name, fonts and images used, etc. in my "mirror site".