Warning! while updating themes

I am so happy to be able to share! I’m sure many veterans already know how to deal with this but there must be some newbies like me who need to learn.

Be careful while modifying your templates! Be sure to make a back up copy but ALSO, be mindful of adding unnecessary spaces in front of and behind your php tags. It DOES make a difference.

If you see an error like below, go into the relevant template (here, functions.php, look for and delete extraneous spaces around these tags. It works! There are more elegant ways to address this, but make sure this isn’t the issue first.

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/xxxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/themes/tpsunrise child/functions.php:9) in /home/xxxxxxx/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 881

Surely I can hear the chorus of “duhs!” all around, but I feel pretty good to have fixed this!

By the way, if anyone is using tpsunrise template, please do post anything you have learned here for reference.

Thanks!