child theme questions

  • Hi All,

    I am new to this and am very confused about what to do about the lack of having a child theme for updates to plugins on my website, so I am hoping that someone can help me.

    I just learned that my former programmer never created a child theme for my site (he was working on my site for over a year and was still not done, stopped responding to emails about what he was doing, etc – I am sure you all know this story – hence former programmer). My new programmer is greatly upset about this lack of a child theme (plugins are starting to ask for updates) and when I asked my former programmer (he actually responded) why he did not create a child theme for my site his response was: “I did not create a child theme because if I did, I would have been bounded by the limitations of the theme, it’s compatibility and it’s functions. I don’t understand why that is an issue.”.

    Now from what I have been reading on the support forum and on WordPress and the internet, it sounds like its very important to have a child theme created at the beginning of WordPress website development, because if you don’t you can’t update plugins/the theme/etc, which in turn lets in viruses and gives your site all sorts of problems going forward.

    So my questions are:

    1) Does a child theme limit a theme like the former programmer said or is he totally incompetent?

    2) The former programmer said that he was writing code and creating the site “up to WordPress standards”? Is creating a child theme part of WordPress standards? Because it seems to me that it is, but perhaps I am mistaken in this.

    3) Am I and my new programmer making too much of a lack of no child theme for no reason? I am new at this and am trying to lean as I go along, so I am not sure.

    4) Is there a way to save the old updates (things that are currently on the site) into a new child theme, so that plugins and other items can be updated? Is there an after the fact fix to this mess?

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks!

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

  • Hi bluelake,

    1) No. That being said, there are many themes out there not in WordPress’ theme repository that are not very child-theme friendly. Some themes state they are, but really only allow edits to the template files and stylesheets.

    2) WordPress states everywhere that the first step is creating a child theme. But like I said before, sometimes depending on the parent theme, some edits are extremely hard to make if that parent wasn’t set up with a child theme in mind.

    3) No. There should still be a child theme, especially for any css changes that may have been implemented.

    4) You can, but depending on that parent theme you are using, it can make this process easy or hard. You can certainly make a backup of your theme files, as well as the WP database and then make a staging or local environment to start moving some of the edited code over so you can test it against the live site. I use a program called Kaleidoscope to see differences between two files, but this process may not be the best for someone who doesn’t own that software. Did your former programmer document their edits? If so, that may be a good place to start. Also, when you compare the parent theme to your edited version, you can often see the differences in the modified date to see which files have been modified since the parent theme was originally downloaded.

    Not sure if any of this helps, but maybe it is a start. Wishing you the best of luck!

    Thread Starter bluelake

    (@bluelake)

    Hi Funstacy,

    Thanks for your response and suggestions. They are good places to start. I will first try and see if the old programmer documented their edits. I had not heard of Kaleidoscope, but will look into it.

    Thanks again!

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