Creating a Child Theme and Reducing Opacity in Spun

Do I have to download WP to my hard drive and create the child theme there? I built my site and chose Spun without downloading anything to my hard drive, so the process would be new to me.

Nope, you don’t need to download WP – but you do need to use a plain text editor to create the new style.css file on your local computer – then upload that to your server using FTP.

Have you seen – https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Child_Themes

You could also try:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/orbisius-child-theme-creator/

Thanks. Good to know. I ran into problems with the first link’s instructions. When I put my website’s url followed by wp-content/themes, I got a blank webpage. That’s what led me to think I had to do it on my hard drive. I’ll have a look at that second link now and let you know how it goes.

Is there any danger of Orbisius crashing a site based on Spun? It looks user-friendly and I would like to proceed, but he provides quite the warning. By checking the CopyFunction.php box that he provides, am I safe? Forgive me being over-cautious here. I have had a tendency in the past to make things worse while trying to make them better! ??

Personally, I’d make my own child theme :). It’s really not hard and you’ll learn some new (very useful) things.

You just need to get FTP set up – ask your hosting company for help with that. Also see:

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

Why can’t you just edit the code in the parent theme? I did a child theme with a plug-in and when I activated it, it had fatal errors. I am now restored to the status quo ante, thankfully.

So to do my own child theme, can I copy the code from the Editor field in Dashboard, paste it into a Notepad file, make the changes I want, and then upload it through FTP? Is it that straightforward?

If you modify theme files, your changes will be overwritten and lost when the theme is updated.

If you are only going to make CSS changes, just use a Custom CSS plugin like Custom CSS manager – and add your CSS there.

Hi all,

I am the creator of Orbisius Child Theme Creator.
The latest version of the plugin features Theme Editor (ajax and available under Appearance) which allows you to edit 2 theme files at the same time.
Therefore you don’t need to use FTP client … of course if the hosting is good.

I’ve seen some plesk hostings which the files don’t have the right permissions in that case you’ll need to use FTP

Slavi

usiranrels, in most cases you don’t need to copy functions.php
that’s why it is put under Advanced section ??

@usiranrels: Please take the time to read through the forum welcome (https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Forum_Welcome), and in future, please do not contact any of the forum mods via their personal email addresses. Any support we offer here is done so on a purely voluntary basis, and should be kept to these forums.

Orbisius,

Thanks for participating in this. FYI, when I used your plug-in to create a child theme and then activated it, the entire site went white (fatal error). This happened even after I tested with a Sandbox site. My web hosting company’s tech support resolved it for me. I have since figured out how to do a manual child theme.

Thank you for the help above, WPYogi and Orbisius. Sorry to bother you, Siobhan. You looked to be so helpful to someone with a similar problem. I didn’t think it would hurt to reach out. Like many people that post here, I am learning not only about web development, but the social dynamics of this community.

Hi usiranrels,

Sorry, to hear that.

I am very interested in the error log file(s).
Can you request them from your hosting company?
When you have the file(s) you can zip it/them and upload the archive to dropbox and send me a download link via https://orbisius.com/contact/

I couldn’t reproduce the crash.
See this troubleshooting attempt video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXOaCA496Es&feature=youtu.be

Are you using an older version of WordPress & Orbisius Child Theme
Creator ?

Also, have you made any changes to the parent theme before you attempted to create a child theme?
e.g. calling some plugin functions from the footer/sidebar?

Slavi

Sorry to bother you, Siobhan. You looked to be so helpful to someone with a similar problem. I didn’t think it would hurt to reach out. Like many people that post here, I am learning not only about web development, but the social dynamics of this community.

You didn’t bother me, sorry to call you out like that. It’s just better to post your problems here so that everyone can benefit from their solution. ??

The opacity is set in the functions.php file. This should be moved to the css file and there should be a settings panel in the wordpress admin that easily let’s someone set their starting site wide opacity. In this case the default is .2 and .3 in the functions.php file. I changed mine to .7 and .7 and am now very happy with the theme.

Modifying theme files is not a good way to make changes as they are lost when the theme is updated. And this thread is long resolved.

Its really not resolved and that’s my point. The opacity issues should not be in the functions file. Reading these threads about this issue, not once does someone point out that the site wide opacity code lives in the functions file. I finally figured it out on my own and I am pointing it out for others so they don’t have to be as frustrated by thus misplacement as I was.