Child Theme Questions (with premium theme)

Can I sort of toggle back and forth and make changes in the parent too

Why on earth would you want to do that? The whole point of using a child theme is that the parent theme remain untouched.

Which css file do i work on?

In a child theme, you just add your changes to the child’s stylesheet(s).

Do I just copy it over to the child theme and just make changes as usual

No. You create a fresh functions.php file in the child them and just add your new or amended functions to it.

I assume plugins aren’t affected

Correct – unless you are using a parent them that relies upon specific plugins. In that case, check with the theme’s developer first.

Ok, I have some more specific questions that still aren’t clear for me.

1. Would WORDPRESS updates themelves ever overwrite anything or break my site in a normal situation?
Especially since I’m not using a theme that comes bundled in the WP install. I’ve always done the updates to my sites and never had anything change. I assume WP updates don’t affect the theme files. Is there something new with 3.0+ re this? Can I just assume that the only threat of overwriting theme files is if I update my theme itself or parts of it. Is this correct?

2. Understanding child themes would be easier for me if it were just a case of making the changes that need to be made on the child theme files, which correspond to the same ones in the parent. What complicates it for me is that you not only have to make the changes in the child theme files but make them *differently*, apparently, in cases other than .css file and page template files.

Specifically, what needs to be added to the code in the functions.php file? How do I handle that file in the child theme?

And which other files from the parent theme have to be copied or recreated in the child theme and coded differently?

3. Could the avoidance of overwriting be accomplished by checking the changelog after theme updates from Woothemes and just updating piecemeal based on the changelog files? Theme updates don’t tend to be too frequent nor sweeping, in my experience…What is the downside of this method?

Thanks for any answers you can provide on this!

Michelle

1. Possibly. For example, the version of jQuery bundled with WordPress has changed a few time recently. If your theme relied upon a specific version of jQuery and that version was no longer available in WordPress, your theme would suffer as a result.

2. I’m not sure that you mean by “differently”. The functions.php file in a child theme should start off empty and should only be populated by completely new or amended parent functions.

3. Not all theme developers maintain changelogs. even where they do exist, it’s unwise to rely on them completely. Even the best dev can forget to enter something in a changelog.

This, below, is the part I was referring to re #2. Maybe don’t need to worry since i’m not a theme developer and it’s just suggesting how to incude extra functionality if I wanted to?
//

TIP FOR THEME DEVELOPERS. The fact that a child theme’s functions.php is loaded first means that you can make the user functions of your theme pluggable —that is, replaceable by a child theme— by declaring them conditionally. E.g.:

if (!function_exists(‘theme_special_nav’)) {
function theme_special_nav() {
// Do something.
}
}
In that way, a child theme can replace a PHP function of the parent by simply declaring it again.

Referencing / Including Files in Your Child Theme

When you need to include files that reside within your child theme’s directory structure, you will use get_stylesheet_directory(). Because the parent template’s style.css is replaced by your child theme’s style.css, and your style.css resides in the root of your child theme’s subdirectory, get_stylesheet_directory() points to your child theme’s directory (not the parent theme’s directory).

Here’s an example, using require_once, that shows how you can use get_stylesheet_directory when referencing a file stored within your child theme’s directory structure.

require_once( get_stylesheet_directory(). ‘/my_included_file.php’ );

Unless you need to amend functions in the parent theme, then it’s not something you need to worry about. If you do, then it’s likely you’ll have to approach it on a case-by-case basis as not all themes as totally child-friendly in this regard.

michelle, you might already have this straight, but in case you don’t…

a child theme starts with nothing but the style.css file. in that file you reference the parent theme. and likely reference the parent theme’s style.css file. it should look something like this:

/*
Theme Name: [Themename] Child
Theme URI: https://yoursite.com
Author: you
Author URI: https://yoursite.com/
Version: 0.1
Template: [themename]
*/

@import url("../[themename]/style.css");

in so doing, the child them will reference absolutely everything from the parent theme. you DO NOT need to copy everything over from the parent theme’s folder. that’s why your functions file starts “blank”, because the child theme will automatically load the parent theme’s functions file as well. it will use all of their template’s as well. if you want to make a change to page.php, then make a copy of it in your theme folder and edit it. wp will then load your page.php file instead of the parent theme’s file.

with it set up like this, your parent theme can be updated and you won’t have to worry about a thing, because your child theme will still be loading all of the parent’s stuff.

did that make sense?