Getting Ahead of Myself?

  • I didn’t see any cautions against modifying the content of the Twenty Eleven Theme in the support text and have already changed some font point sizes and colors and the background color and added header artwork. Now I see warnings in this forum not to fool with the “default” theme and to create a “child” version. Can I backtrack and restore the parent or should I just dump it and start the blog all over again? I’ve put in a lot of time but it’s all “learning” so I don’t mind beginning again.

    Thanks in advance for help and suggestions. – Bob

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Make yourself a child theme now.

    Download a copy of the latest twentyeleven from–extend – themes.
    Use that as the base of your child theme.

    Download a copy (in a different location) of the twentyeleven theme that you have altered.
    Try to copy the changes you made in this theme to the new child theme.

    If you don’t make a child theme the next update to WP will overwrite all your changes to the default theme.

    You should always use a child theme if you’re going to make changes — aside from the need for an unchanged copy of Twenty Eleven for troubleshooting, you will also lose all your changes the next time the default theme is updated.

    It’s not hard to create a child theme with all the work you’ve already done: I’m guessing that all you’ve changed is the style.css file.

    First, make a copy of your new version and save it. (If you’ve made any changes to other files in the theme, you’ll need to save those too, but it doesn’t sound like it from what you’ve described.)

    Next, create a child theme using the instructions on this page. In particular, you must have the correct header at the top of your stylesheet to indicate that this is a child of Twenty Eleven.

    Now, paste the changes you made into the body of your child theme’s style.css. Technically, you don’t need to copy over your whole new stylesheet — just the lines where you changed something from the original, but if you’ve really hacked up the whole stylesheet, it can be tough to sort out afterwards.

    Put the child theme version of style.css and any other files you’ve changed into a folder and .zip them up. Upload them the way you’d install any other theme. DON’T FORGET to reinstall a clean copy of Twenty Eleven! And activate your new theme.

    Thread Starter Bob Thomas

    (@bob-thomas)

    Thanks to both of you. I’ll head in that direction. Appreciate the quick response.

    I am in the same boat as the OP. I am a total novice, so please bear with me! I do not understand .css, .php., etc. but I’m determined to learn!

    I initially started just editing the TwentyEleven template to start creating my own site (just following what it said to do: “delete this and add your own text!”). I am having trouble understanding how to create the menus, so I wanted to just go back to the default. That’s when I discovered I should have never edited the default template in the first place but should be working on a “child” template. This makes perfect sense to me. So, I’m following the advice you have written here but need a little more explanation, please.

    “Download a copy (in a different location) of the twentyeleven theme that you have altered.” Can you please explain how to do that? Once that is done, how to I know which one is the Default and which one is the Child? I’m not worried about saving what I’ve done already, I’ll just start fresh with the child theme.

    Bless all of you people out there that have the patience to help people like me!

    Please post a new topic.

    Will do. Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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