In This Tutorial: We will show you 2 different methods on how to download/install older versions of WP plugins.
Each day, hundreds of thousands of WordPress plugins and themes publish updates. Inevitably, WordPress site owners will encounter a plugin compatibility or update issue.
If you recently updated WordPress, your theme, or any third-party plugins and are all of a sudden experiencing issues (site crashes, white screen of death or WSOD, loss in functionality somehow, etc), sometimes the quickest and easiest way to debug or fix it is to revert back to an older plugin version.
Before Making Any Changes:
Unless your site is already crashed or white-screening, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS perform a full site backup before making any changes to your site.
If you prefer our team to perform a full backup of your WordPress site and MYSQL database, click here.
Technique #1 – Download Older Versions of a Plugin From the WP Repository
The first way to download an older version of a WordPress plugin is to simply grab it from the repository. For demo purposes, we will be locating a previous version of the free Elementor plugin.
1) Search for a WordPress plugin in the WordPress Repository.
2) Scroll down on the plugin’s page and click on the “Advanced View.”
3) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select a “Previous Version” to download. This will download the .zip file of whichever plugin version you select. You can then upload and install through your Plugins page in your WP Dashboard.
Technique #2 – Rollback WordPress Plugin to Older Version
One of our favorite (and simplest) ways of reverting back to an older version of a WordPress plugin is using the free WP Rollback plugin.
Not only is this plugin completely Multi-site compatible, but also automates pretty much the entire Rollback procedure. With over 80,000 installs and nearly a 5 star-rating, it’s been battle-tested and approved by many WP site admins (also it’s been tested up to the latest version of WordPress).
1) Simply download & install the WP Rollback plugin, then activate it.
2) When you go to your Plugins page, you’ll now be able to see an option to “Rollback” your plugins. This will work for all plugins currently available in the WordPress repository. Third-Party plugins will have to be manually downloaded from the developer’s site.
3) Once you click “Rollback” on your desired plugin, you will then see a WP Rollback screen with all the previous versions of that plugin as available in the WP Repository. If you are curious about what updates/patches a particular plugin version introduced, you can view the changelog of each version to the right.
Select your desired plugin version and click “Rollback” towards the bottom of the screen.
4) You will then see one last final screen confirming that you’d like to perform the following rollback. Again, make sure you have backed up your site before making any major changes to your site. Once ready, click “Rollback” to complete the process.
