Theme:Twenty Eleven/child_twentyeleven updated?

If you post a link to your site, I can let you know if you are running a Twenty Eleven child. If you do a view source on your site and look for the file style.css, you should see two links to the CSS files, one for the parent theme (twentyeleven) and one for the child (typically twentyeleven-child, but developers have the freedom to call the child theme whatever they want, so it could be different). For some older installations, you may just see the link for the child theme’s style.css file, and the child theme’s style.css file will do an @import of the parent theme’s style.css file.

If you see an update to TwentyEleven, you should go ahead and install it, because your child theme will use the updated files from the parent theme. You can read more about child themes here.

If you have further questions about the TwentyEleven theme, best to post them on the TwentyEleven support forum.

thank you CrouchingBruin (from Boston?? … Boston Bruins)

No wonder I couldn’t find anything on the Dashboard

Had viewed the style.css but hadn’t looked for theme

BTW, website: firechaplain.org

For some reason, firechaplain.org gave me an error when I tried to view it, so I couldn’t examine the site. And firechaplains.org (with an ‘s’) exists, but it isn’t a WordPress site.

Bruin refers to the mascot of UCLA, the school where I graduated from.

UCLA – understand

Forgive me – gave you wrong URL – should be
https://www.firechaplain101.org

It does not appear to be a child theme of Twenty Eleven. However, you can confirm by going to Appearance → Themes from the admin dashboard, and the active theme will be the first one listed (plus it will say Active in the lower left corner of the thumbnail). Hopefully the original developer of the site didn’t make any changes directly to the theme files. If so, any update to the theme might erase those modifications. Any changes made through the Customization options, however (by going to Appearance → Customize or Appearance → Theme Options), should remain intact.

Thanks again.

Appearance->Theme: Twenty Eleven active … now (since I updated)

Before updating … Appear->Theme: Twenty Eleven/child_twentyeleven

Updating added the ‘search’ widget to menu line but I found a post in the forum for removing it (modified Header.php)… but update got rid of ‘Upcoming Events’ and displays ‘Archives’ and ‘Meta’ widgets.

I saw a forum post to removed ‘Archives’ (but went to bed b4 trying)
(probably post about removing ‘Meta – I’ll check)

Can I delete the Twenty Eleven theme and add the Twenty Eleven/child_twentyeleven theme back in?

Can I delete the Twenty Eleven theme and add the Twenty Eleven/child_twentyeleven theme back in?

It sounds like the original developer did not create an actual child theme, but just made changes to the theme itself, so there is no child theme to restore from. That is, the way that child themes are built is a new folder is created on the same level as the parent theme, and any files which need to be modified are copied over from the parent theme folder into the child theme folder. Even though the nomenclature seems to indicate that the child theme is a level deeper than the parent, in actuality, they are on the same level. The folder structure should look like this:

/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven
/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven-child

In your case, there is no separate child theme folder, the original developer made the changes directly to the files in the twentyeleven folder, calling it a “child theme” when it actually is not.

It also sounds like you’re about to repeat the same mistake, i.e., directly editing the theme files, so your changes will be overwritten the next time the theme is updated. A couple of things you can do:

1. Most hosts do daily backups, so you can have your host restore your site to the last good instance, like yesterday or the day before. Once the restore is complete, download the twentyeleven folder contents to somewhere safe. The problem then becomes whether or not to update the theme, and how to do so without overwriting the changes. You can then create a “real” child theme:

1. Switch the active theme to something else.
2. Rename the existing twentyeleven folder to twentyeleven-child.
3. Install the latest version of the twentyeleven theme in a twentyeleven folder.
4. Go through the files in the twentyeleven-child folder and remove any files which have not been modified.
5. Remove the functions.php file from the child theme folder and create one as described in the instructions for creating a child theme.
6. Activate the child theme.

Then you should be able to update the parent theme from here on out without affecting the child theme.

• So, the above sounds like a lot of work. If the changes you need to make aren’t that extensive, you may not want to go through all of that trouble. However, you still should create a child theme. Then, any file which needs to be modified, like header.php, should be copied from the parent theme into the child theme folder and the changes made there.

Do you know if the Upcoming Events was done through a plugin? It looks like you have both an Event Registration plugin and a Google Calendar plugin installed, and I’m wondering if either of those were used to display the Upcoming Events (sorry, I don’t remember what the site looked like before).

Thanks again.

Suspect that (maybe) the Google Calendar plugin was modified (or not really used) because it’s description says that a sidebar widget is used for the calendar – but NOT USED. The website displays a large calendar.

As it turns out, the are no Upcoming Events to display (they’ve all expired … that’s why the ‘webmaster’ change – owners needed updates made). I’ve tried entering a test event but got a weird error.

Thinking now that maybe the best course is to convince people the large calendar is not needed and ‘rewrite’ the event portion of the website. (As far as can tell, any changes to the theme, etc, are probably due to “event processing” – other than events the website seems pretty straight-forward.)

I’m still digesting your remarks and deciding what to do.

Finally found the answer my child theme problem. The website designer (who is no longer available) used a theme extension (instead of a true child theme). Fortunately I found his ‘original’ theme directory/files and was able to compare the official 2011 theme vs theme used for the current website vs my child theme. Most changes were in css files (style. rtl, edit-style, and edit-style-rtl) plus small changes in the header/function php files. Bottom line, sorry for my basic and frustrating questions … at least from my naivete has resulted in a fair amount of knowledge for me.

Glad you finally got it sorted out. Must have been very frustrating at first.