Developer customized Twenty Eleven theme! How to keep updated?

  • Resolved gtfractal

    (@gtfractal)


    10 years, 4 months ago

    I have inherited responsibility for a WordPress site which uses a heavily customized Twenty Eleven theme. The developer created the site for our company a couple of years ago, and instead of making a child theme, he changed almost all of the theme files in the template itself.

    I can’t update the theme for fear of overwriting his changes, but I think I’d better figure out a way to do something, for security’s sake. Is there a way to keep his changes yet update the theme when security updates are available?

    Thanks!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • Did your designer modify the stylesheet of the theme as well or did he just modify the PHP files?

    First, I suggest using a site like diffchecker.com to find out what changes your designer made to the theme’s files. In particular, I would note any changes the designer made to the theme’s stylesheet.

    Once you’ve got that information, you could make your child theme, copy the modified PHP files into the child theme’s folder, copy the modified CSS rules into your child theme’s style.css, update the parent theme, and then switch to the child theme. You will probably have to reassign any custom navigation menus and sidebar widgets. This should work because WordPress will use any PHP files from the child theme first and will use the parent theme’s files as a last resort.

    Thread Starter gtfractal

    (@gtfractal)

    Thanks Stephen – I don’t know why I didn’t see this reply before. I’ll get diffchecker and get to work and see what’s changed, etc.

    Thanks again!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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