Copy parent theme (twenty eleven) into child theme

  • I am brand new to Word Press (as in, today is my first day with it) and web authoring in general. I want to get the basics of the blog looking the way I want them, so I can move on to actually writing posts. I plan to use Twenty Eleven as my theme since the layout is more or less exactly what I want, but I’ve seen that I’m not supposed to edit it directly and should instead create a child theme.

    I think I’ve figured out that part, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to copy everything from Twenty Eleven into the child theme so I have full editing capabilities of every aspect of the theme.

    I made a style.css file but then all I had was that one style.css file, and header.php and all of them weren’t there so I couldn’t figure out how to change the other components of the page and all that.

    I really want to tackle this on my own and master (or at least feel somewhat competent in) Word Press.

    Any advice would be appreciated!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    I think I’ve figured out that part, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to copy everything from Twenty Eleven into the child theme so I have full editing capabilities of every aspect of the theme.

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Child_Themes

    You’re on the right track but don’t have to copy everything just copy what you want to modify.

    Create an empty directory wp-content/themes/twentyeleven-child and put this simple style.css file. Nothing else, just this file.

    /*
Theme Name: Twenty Eleven Child Theme
Author: Self-Help WordPress User
Template: twentyeleven
*/

@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

    Now go to your dashboard and activate the Twenty Eleven Child Theme.

    Visit https://your-wordpress-url/wp-admin/theme-editor.php and you can edit the style.css there.

    Use FTP or your host provided file management tools to then copy only the files you want to modify.

    If you do want to modify everything (and that’s cool too) then don’t use a child theme.

    Make that full copy into a new directory such as wp-content/themes/my-twentyeleven and modify the copy’s style.css.

    Change the Theme Name: Twenty Eleven to Theme Name: My Twenty Eleven, activate that new then and you’ll be all set.

    Thread Starter evolberding

    (@evolberding)

    Thanks Jan. When I try to do this, my site doesn’t work. I have a file that contains all of the files (.css and .php) for Twenty Eleven, and I’ve modified the style.css file to reflect the fact that this is a new theme, etc. I compress it all into a .zip and upload it as a new theme on my dashboard, but then I get an error page when I try to go to my site, saying that it may be configured incorrectly (which is likely true).

    A tangential (and probably very very basic) question is that when I upload files to my host’s directory (I’m using Bluehost) what do I do with them after that? I tried the approach of making a new child theme directory and got everything onto my host website, but then how to I get them to show up on my WordPress site?

    I’m sure that these are very easy to someone who is WordPress- and web-savvy, but this is all so totally new to me and I have no clue what I’m doing. Hopefully it’ll get easier from here!

    You can download an example child theme of twenty eleven here:
    https://www.huurautohuren.com/twenty-eleven-child-theme-free-download/

    It is very basic, but it adds a sidebar to single posts and also 4 widget area’s to the header. Maybe you can use this as a base, and modify the code some more to your needs?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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