Child Themes

Firefox is a browser and yes u need it plus its two extensions – firebug and the web dev toolkit………at least

plus u need a good free text editor like notepad ++ for windows

plus u need some wp buddies who know what they are doing ??

starting a child theme is easy………..u only need style.css

ask again if u need help

have fun and good luck

You don’t need Firefox at all. however if you do use the 2 extensions that Root mentions are useful, but not essential. Firefox is just another browser, like Internet Explorer, Opera etc.

Child Themes is a good starting place.

You will be working on server weather you have installed on your computer or a host server using a browser FF,IE,Chrome to create a child theme It is not hard follow the instructions from link @rich ‘elfin’ Pedley posted and we can help you any part you do not understand.

Oh the other thing you need is a local host environment so u can run WP on yr own pc for developing yr themes.

Ok So my hosting company loaded the EMPTY File into the File Manager, but I think I need to upload what I create. My question of the hour….
Once I have created the Child Theme (with just the bare minimum to make it uploadable to the Theme Section of my page, can I make my alterations in the Theme portion of my page Editor or do I have to upload each change into the File Manager of my Hosting company?

You can edit most files in the theme editor once there is a file there to edit.

However… be warned you can cause issues viewing the site if you make a mistake, so be ready with FTP if things go wrong.

When you make a child theme you basically creating another theme and copying the files that you want to make changes in child theme keeping the same structure and make changes in child theme the leaving the parent theme files untouched.

Mostly you will be making changes in style.css and functions.php so what you do is copy the css code that you want to make change into child theme styl.css and make the change there.

The way child theme works is that wordpress will load child theme first and if it does not find the code needed it will the take code from parent theme.

Christmas is interupting my progress….. Do i upload a child theme for say Header php and then an additional Child theme for (style.css)?
Also do I upload the entire header php section and the entire
(style.css) or just the changes as I make them?

in a child theme you need style.css and if you read through the page I linked to above you’ll find you can include the original themes CSS

you can only activate one child theme at a time, so all changes go into the same child theme.

Ok So my hosting company loaded the EMPTY File into the File Manager,

If you creating child theme it needs to be in wp-content/themes folder along with twentyten theme folder
when you click on themes folder you should see folders with theme names.

Thanks everyone. I have a child Theme showing in my theme Folder with the statement Broken Theme… needs Css. So I will copy the Css portion of my parent theme and upload it… more questions later.

don’t forget to refer to Child Themes

Yr life would be a lot easier isay81 if u did yr developing on yr local computer.

Root.. I am sure your correct, but I have no idea how that would work for now :o)
I finally have a Child Theme! Apparently I saved it as a txt file and that made a huge difference. I think someone at the hosting company helped me out and made the correction. ANYWAY The entire reason I wanted to do this was because I hard coded some changes in the Header Section and one little minor change in the Stylesheet.
Where do I start copying the header changes that are still in the main theme? I changed all the pages to image tags. Site latterdaychatter.net
Do I paste the code below this part
/*
Theme Name: Twenty Ten Child
Description: Child theme for the Twenty Ten theme
Author: Robin
Template: twentyten
*/

AS IN RIGHT HERE????

Oh my goodness… that changed everything. I had changed the header to a custom header as allowed by the parent theme and that was lost. I am afraid it is too late for this site, due to all the changes that were made with widgets etc. Good to know for the next site I create!