Updating ThemeForest Themes with the Envato WordPress Toolkit

Updating ThemeForest Themes with the Envato WordPress Toolkit

ThemeForest is no doubt the most popular place to find premium WordPress themes.

Paying a one-off fee for a theme is straightforward and users who buy themes also benefit from lifetime updates (unless the theme is removed from the marketplace).

The Envato Market WordPress plugin lets you view your ThemeForest purchases within the WordPress dashboard and select whether or not to receive updates.

In this post, I’ll show you how to install and use the toolkit plugin.

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Envato WordPress Toolkit

Unlike most other free WordPress plugins, the toolkit isn’t available in the WordPress Plugin Repository. You’ll need to go to GitHub to download the plugin.

Envato WordPress Toolkit GitHub
Download the Envato WordPress Toolkit at GitHub.

After you’ve downloaded the plugin (by clicking the “Download ZIP” click on the right-hand side of the page), there are a few steps to go through to get the plugin up and running.

#1. API Key

You will need to generate an API key to link your WordPress site to your Themeforest account.

Login to Themeforest, go to your dashboard and click on My Settings. The API Keys screen allows you to generate a free API key.

Generate API Key
Generate a free API key on the Themeforest website.

#2. Install Envato WordPress Toolkit Plugin

Install and activate the toolkit plugin. A new menu item, Envato Toolkit, will appear in the admin sidebar. Click on the sidebar link and enter your marketplace username and secret API key. Click Save Settings.

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All of your theme purchases will now appear on this page after it refreshes.

#3. Theme Updates

The plugin will now alert you to theme updates – so long as you check the toolkit settings regularly.

Click install automatically beside each of your themes to automatically update them.

themezilla

The toolkit settings page also allows you to install themes that you haven’t already uploaded to your site, delete ones you don’t use and view version details. You can also set up theme backups.

It’s a fairly simple plugin, but also a helpful one.

Envato WordPress Toolkit was released in 2012 and hasn’t changed all that much since. It’s yet to have its own auto-updater, so hopefully this is a feature the folks at Envato will add soon.

Always Use a Child Theme!

Updating your themes shouldn’t affect any customizations to your website, so long as you’re using a child theme. If you haven’t set up a child theme before, check out our guide on how to create a child theme.

What do you think of updating this way? Let us know in the comments!

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Raelene Morey Raelene is the Founder of Words By Birds, a digital writing agency that works with startups, SaaS, B2B, and WordPress businesses on turning tech speak into words that convert. She was formerly the managing editor at WPMU DEV. A computer science grad turned newspaper journalist, when she’s not taming browser tabs, she likes brunching and bushwalking.