Have a default theme available

Hmm, that’s weird.

Does the error go away if you install Twenty Twenty-Two instead?

Hi James, I’m not sure I haven’t tried. Worried about losing all my appearance modifications/settings if I uninstall Karuna. However this has been an issue for a year or two. The warning is not always there, although it is fairly common that it pops up. I have read of the same thing occurring for others at various times but as yet have never read a solution when others have asked the same question. These have been with different themes installed, not specifically those that I have. If I remove TwentyTwenty two (or whatever others I’ve tried at different times) the recommendation to remove the inactive theme goes away, but the “Your site does not have any default theme” warning remains.

Ian

The message will go away if you add the following two lines in your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_DEFAULT_THEME', 'themedirname');
define('CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED' , true);

Change themedirname to the directory name of your Karuna theme.

The second line is a bonus! If you delete the WordPress bundled themes/plugins, normally WordPress will re-install them during a core upgrade. The second line will stop WordPress from doing that.

Worried about losing all my appearance modifications/settings if I uninstall Karuna.

You won’t have to activate Twenty Twenty-Two, just install it to see if the health check stops warning that you have no default themes installed.

If the warning continues, please report it as a bug: https://make.www.ads-software.com/core/handbook/testing/reporting-bugs/

The message will go away if you add the following two lines in your wp-config.php file

That will work-around the bug, but it won’t fix the bug.

Hi again James,
I went to try as you suggested, but found that as well as Karuna which is in use (activated) that despite the warning about Twenty Twenty Two, that I, during a previous attempt to rid myself of the warning, had deleted Twenty Twenty Two, & had installed Twenty Seventeen instead (not activated). So why Twenty Twenty Two got a mention in that warning (& not Twenty Seventeen) I don’t know.

So I decided to delete Twenty Seventeen & the warning changed to just

“`Themes add your site’s look and feel. It’s important to keep them up to date, to stay consistent with your brand and keep your site secure.

Your site has 1 installed theme, and it is up to date.

Your site does not have any default theme. Default themes are used by WordPress automatically if anything is wrong with your normal theme.`”

Which appeared I was back to square one. So I then tried what you suggested, I installed Twenty Twenty Two.

I don’t understand why that should have made any difference, but it did! The warning has now gone completely. Did you mean ‘re-install’ as opposed to ‘install’. If so I’m guessing that there had been a problem with the initial installation of Twenty Twenty-Two which somehow caused both the warning & the glitch which said Twenty Twenty-Two when it had been replaced with Twenty Seventeen??

So a follow up question now the warning has gone if I may?

If I have Twenty Twenty-Two installed. A) is it now my ‘default’ theme, & B) if there is any problem with my active theme & wordpress substitute my default theme, can I then just re-install my currently active theme (Karuna), activate it & still have it’s current settings preserved ……… or is it a matter of content being preserved but all the customisations needing to to be re-made? If the latter – is there a simple means of recording what they are currently whilst everything is how I want it?

Dion – thanks – but at the risk of making you cringe I have to admit that editing a file like that is well out of my comfort zone. I’m definitely a ‘drag & drop’ website constructor & even getting in to the files on my website via FTP (?) would be a challenge.

Thanks again to you both.

A) Unless you do the modification mentioned by Dion, which I don’t recommend, the latest Twenty theme is considered the default. “Default Theme” is simply the term WordPress uses for a theme that it resets to if things go completely haywire. The defaults are the Twenties because those are built by the core teams and are considered to be bug-free.

B) If a problem happens that results in or requires the default theme to activate, it’s hard to say what will need to be done next, that will need to be resolved at the time, but at the very least it suggests your previous theme was the problem.

Thanks again, So

do I need to have one of the Twenties installed

but not activated, for it to be *my* default ( for wordpress to reset to if the need arises)? I realise that this is very basic, but I have read in lots of places the reason to have a default theme, but never what one needs to do to get one. Is it as simple as just having it installed but not used?

Yeah, you just need to have the latest Twenty installed. No need for it to be active.

In this case, that’s Twenty Twenty-Two.

Mate, you have been very helpful – much appreciated. Think I’m sorted for now.
All the best,
Cuppa