multisite & themes

If you’re using a theme options page in the backend of WordPress, it’s specific to that site. It won’t change on other site.

It *will* change if you code it in the theme files itself.

Thanks Andrea – I’ve just been reading on the DIYthemes forum that other folks are uploading the theme multiple times with different file names and that seems to work for them.

Thanks Andrea. So there is no way to customize the theme on a site-by-site basis then? For example, even if they wanted to tweak the theme style sheet slightly, then it would change it for all the sites, right?

Is there any way to enable a local copy of the theme for each site in multi-site?

Leave original theme files untouched, try to use child themes.

To manage which blog uses which theme, look at SuperAdmin->Themes: “Themes must be enabled for your network before they will be available to individual sites.” Un-intuitively, if you leave a theme on “no” you can still enable individual blog access access to it at SuperAdmin->Sites->Edit.

In this way, an original untouched parent theme appears in no blog’s allowed theme lists; further, only the child theme you choose would appear in a blog’s allowed theme list. I can update my theme, ie twentyten, via the repo any time it warrants, and my changes to my own child themes stay permanently.

Yep, you can use child themes, or if it;s css-only tweaks, get a plugin.

https://wpmututorials.com/plugins/css-editor-plugins/

Have a similar issue but I don’t think child themes will help.

I need to be able to map two separate themes… so franksmeats.com and franksmeats.com/beef having basically the same layout, functionality, but changing imagery, graphics, css of each slightly.

Child theme is perfect!

1) Make the main theme.

2) Make the child theme, replacing the images and css as needed.

3) Pick the child theme for beef.

4) Have an all beef hot dog.

Yes, really. If it’s JUST css changes, use one of the many css plugins. They works exactly the same as the paid custom css option at wordpress.com. (hey, they even released the plugin they use to do that for ya!)

Or for more control use a child theme.

I honestly cannot think of anything you wouldn’t be able to do either way.

Is there a way to have the main site theme (with it’s menus, name, etc) remaining constant for all sites??

I want my users to be able to upload their posts, pages, etc and have custom categories, all that stuff: but, I want it all presented withou the sitename changing, the menu changing and so forth.

Sort of as if the user sites were presented within a frame with the top nav being from the “parent” site. I don’t want to allow them to change the look and feel at all.

Any thoughts?

I’m using the Studio theme.

You’ll have to wrangle the menu, but you CAN set them all to the same theme.

I’d suggest searching the forum, as we’ve gone over this plenty, but the search is sucking lately.

set default theme:
define(‘WP_DEFAULT_THEME’, ‘theme-folder-name’);
in wp-config.php

menu stuff:

just before the nav bar code put
<?php switch_to_blog(1); ?>
right after the navbar code put
<?php restore_current_blog(); ?>
then it will always show the pages from Blog #1.