Making changes to WordPress header.php through DashBoard - wordpress

First I take a copy of the header.php before I made changes.
After I made changes to the header like the default image and header text through the dashboard
I reopened the header.php and find no changes there.
My assumption is when changes being made through Dashboard then dynamically the corresponding php files would updated. No?
If not, how would be changes in Dashboard be reflected in php file?

If you're making your changes to the header.php files via Appearances >> Editor >> Header.php ... then of course you're altering your header.php file.
You can also accomplish this by FTPing the file or using your server's control panel.
But before you make all these changes to your core WordPress files, I'd have to ask -- "why"? It's never (recommended) to make changes to your core WordPress files. This is because when you go to update your WordPress the next time an update comes out, you'll lose all your changes ... so you'll have to keep a changelog of your edits or end up with a dinosaur version of WP in the future.
If your theme doesn't give you an opportunity to do so alter the header in other manners, perhaps a plugin is a better solution. Or perhaps using custom CSS is a better solution if that fits your need. What are you trying to accomplish? Why would it need a moderation of a WP core file? Most likely, there are other ways to accomplish your goal(s).

Related

Afterlogic Webmail Lite custom theme / skin

I would like to make a custom dark theme for a web client.
I tried everything but no matter what I changed I cannot get any changes to take effect. I found out this page in the documentation but I cannot get it to work:
https://afterlogic.com/docs/webmail-lite-8/developers-guide/creating-new-skin
Does anyone have some experience with this webmail client?
The recommended option for creating a new skin is to clone and rename one of the existing skins, and upon making changes to it, run gulp styles --themes YOUR_THEME_NAME command. Once this operation is performed, check static/styles/themes/YOUR_THEME_NAME and see if you get your changes reflected there. If the changes are in place, then it's probably browser cache causing it, try clearing it and see if that helps.
In fact, it's not required to deal with .less files, you can simply create a copy of an existing theme under static/styles/themes directory - but in either case, you need to make sure the new theme is listed in ThemeList section of data/settings/modules/CoreWebclient.config.json configuration file.

Custom CSS WordPress Theme via cPanel (not updating)

I am wondering why I am not unable to make changes; I already tried several things yet, I don't seem to be able to update the CSS, the following I did already:
There is no Editor, so I am unable to make changes via there.
I am an Administrator and have access to cPanel.
I made changes via ../wp-content/theme/my-theme/style.css and no changes were made.
I empty my cache via plugin and hard reload my Chrome, Firefox and Safari. And no changes were made.
Is there any other solutions? I already found the file which contains all the styles. I would try to add my own class, and see if I am to see if there is any effect.
First thing first, From cPanel you can navigate to your website from the fileManager, use it to make code changes and then save them. You need to clear the cache everytime you make changes (i usually do it from the browser (in chrome, open the dev console, then long press on the refresh button and select the bottom one)
If the changes are still not showing on your site, I think that maybe you are editing the wrong CSS? Is this your theme and are you 100% sure you are editing the right file and, for example, it's not overwritten by a child theme or something else?
If you are using any framework, maybe your property is overwritten by your framework (for example, by bootstrap). To check this, open the console or try to add !important in your CSS file.
Just as an example, when I develop a theme I leave the root style.css with only the theme definitions, and then I create different stylesheets in a different folder. This leads me to the next question: are you enqueue your file correctly? is it even loaded by WordPress?
to check this I usually inspect the code in and search for the id of the file I enqueued from my functions.php.
Unfortunately, without more details, this is the only things I could think of when developing and WordPress theme and make changes from cPanel. Hope some of this can actually help.
Please check following options
Permission of file at ../wp-content/theme/my-theme/style.css.
Grab the css and open in Dream-viewer or sublime is there any css syntax issue.
Also the path of style.css in header is show same by view source.
Or
Even you can use the plugins which allow to add custom css without toching the server check this plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-custom-css/

Events manager - child theme not working

I am trying to make changes to plugins/events-manager/templates/forms/event/bookings.php via my child theme. When I make changes to the file directly in the plugin, it works well, but I know the way to go is to make changes at the child theme level so this is what i have done:
I added the edited bookings.php to twentytwelve-child/plugins/events-manager/templates/forms/event/bookings.php but for some reasons the changes are not applied.
I have also tried to add the edited bookings.php to twentytwelve-child/events-manager/templates/forms/event/bookings.php but it is not working either.
I would appreciate if someone could help me figure this out (screenshots below). FYI - I am not a developer, so please try not to be too technical in your answers.
Many thanks,
Yvan
It would be nice if developers could simply override a specific file within a plugin from within their theme, but I'm pretty sure WP doesn't work that way (At least not for overriding plugins. Theme files? Yes. Plugins? No).
If the plugin developer was nice they will have given you some override capabilities like using action hooks, filters, or including their function as static within a class.
From the looks of the events-manager plugin file there are three such action hooks available:
do_action('em_events_admin_bookings_header', $EM_Event);
do_action('em_event_edit_ticket_td', $EM_Ticket);
do_action('em_events_admin_bookings_footer', $EM_Event);
You will either need to hook into these actions to make your adjustments (highly recommended), or duplicate the plugin, rename it, and edit it manually (which means you will need to duplicate these edits every time you upgrade... YUCK!)
EDIT after further researching the events-manager plugin:
While WP doesn't provide this template override functionality, it looks like the plugin does. However after some digging in the documentation I noticed that this functionality doesn't specify weather it supports child themes. Try placing the template override within twentytwelve instead of twentytwelve-child. If that works, then maybe you could move that folder back into twentytwelve-child and create a symlink within twentytwelve to the real folder in twentytwelve-child (sort of tricking the plugin). Doing it this way means you have to recreate the symlink each time you update twentytwelve, but the trade off is that you can now override templates and won't loose your changes if you update twentytwelve (just the symlink).
The problem is your file path:
plugins/events-manager/templates/forms/event/bookings.php
should be
plugins/events-manager/forms/event/bookings.php
If you have issues with EM we monitor the free forums here (I stumbled on this by coincidence) - https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/events-manager
also #StevenLeimberg, thank for chipping in! we do support child themes it was just wrong directory structure.

Wordpress theme is taking no affect?

i want to make some changes into my wordpress css file. i downloaded the style.css and other css file via ftp and made all the changes into the codes i wanted to. I uploaded the files and replace it with the other files. I waited for some time to take it affect but nothing happened, i left it and open my site the other day but the things were still same, no changes. I was using the WP Minify cache plugin. I even deleted it and re upload the css files again but still no changes. I tried out so many things but no success.
I than changed the name of the theme main directory via ftp, it help me a bit and made me happy for awhile, all the changes appeared. I again needed some changes in css files but unfortunately again suffering the same process. Please help :(
P.S. No theme is taking the effects of modifications in the css files codes. i tried different themes, but same results. Even if i delete the style.css nothing happened, but when i delete the entire directory of that theme then blank white page appear on my website.
It doesn't sound like you activated the new theme from your administration panel.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Themes#Selecting_the_Active_Theme
When using any cache plugins you should delete its cache when you do any changes to the website. Have you already done that?
Are there any other css files being loaded after style.css that may alter what you are trying to change?
It's generally not a good idea to edit the themes style.css directly b/c when you upgrade that theme you will lose all of your customizations.
Doesn't your theme have some place for custom CSS? Some themes have it in Appearance >> Theme Options, or something of that nature. What theme is it? Do you have a framework, or child themes? More info needed ... but every theme has a spot for custom css; as was mentioned, it's not best practice to make your modifications in the actual main theme stylesheet, due to updates, etc. ... and anything in the custom css section overrides the default theme stylesheet.

Advice on SAFELY modifying / customizing Header on a Wordpress theme

I just started using Wordpress 3.0 to get a simple blog up and going. For now I am working with the default theme "Twenty Ten".
I want to make a simple change:
I'd like to modify the layout of the bloginfo( 'name' ), bloginfo( 'description' ), and php header_image() that appears at the top of the blog.
So, under Appearance, Editor, I select Header.php and I can see how this is being rendered.
It appears I can just modify this to my liking and I am good to go. (Correct?)
If so, my question is: is it considered proper practice to modify the html in header.php?
It seems to me that this is a bit dangerous, for example when it comes time to upgrade that same theme. How do I know which php files I have applied customizations to? Say I modify 6 php files, then an upgrade of the theme comes along...how does one handle re-applying these changes to the upgraded theme?
Is it a total "do over"?
Is there a better way to handle this scenario?
Maybe some themes are more powerful than others and can handle this type of customization more flexibly, and I should be searching for such a theme? Or, is there a reasonably proper and safe way to do this by directly editing the php files?
Child theme, child theme, child theme. Create a new folder in themes (name it whatever you want. Go crazy. As long as you don't name it twentyten). Create a style.css file in that directory and copy the whole style.css file from twentyten into it. Then, change the theme name in the css headers and add this line after the tags:
Template: twentyten
Then copy the header.php file over to another file in your directory, and edit to your heart's content. If twentyten ever gets updated, you'll get the benefit of those updates (unless they're in css or the header) without losing your changes.
Yes, you can edit the theme to your liking. I think it's common practice (however, I've always just created my own themes from scratch). Just give credit where it's due and don't pass it off as your own original work.
To avoid over-writing your customized theme when an upgrade comes out, you could save the customized one to a different folder in the themes directory with a different name, like Twenty Ten Customized. You can then copy or re-do the changes in the upgraded theme if you think the upgrades are worth the trouble. There's no rule that says you have to have the latest version of the theme, after all.
There might be other themes that allow a high degree of customization without editing the php, but most of the time you'd have to edit the php I'd think. (but I'm no pro theme developer.)
I would do as Benny suggested and rename the theme so that it isn't overwritten when you upgrade Wordpress.
I would not worry about updates to the actual theme because I don't think those ever really happen. The last Wordpress default theme was Kubrick and, to my knowledge, it rarely was updated and most updates were minor and went unnoticed by most users. If you go about customizing your theme, I don't think Wordpress is going to update the Twenty Ten theme to the point where you would ever wish that you hadn't edited the source because you wanted to upgrade to the new default theme.
If you don't want to actually edit any of the theme files, check out something like Thesis that allows you to customize most things from the admin.
Note: I'm not aware of a free theme that offers a lot of customization options through the admin panel, but there might be something if you check around for a while.
If I really had to stop automatic updates on my Wordpress theme, I'd do exactly what Kris + Chris Schmitz suggested (i.e. rename the theme differently). Modify header information in the style.css file in your theme's root to do this.
Personally, however, if the theme already works for me out of the box, I think I'd most probably already be fine with that. My website's running, the theme's working, and updating my theme may just break my site in ways I don't know.
I'd probably update it only for major security updates, but I'd probably be reading a changelog for that. But if I was doing that, I'd know what files exactly were modified, and I can just manually do it myself. Sounds like a lot of work, but better than my site buckling on me by some unknown cause.
If you do as Benny suggests and create a renamed copy of the default theme, you can use a free diff tool to compare the directories when an upgrade comes out. I'd use Meld ( http://meld.sourceforge.net/ ) to do a three-way directory comparison (Original theme, upgraded theme, modified copy) to determine if any changes have been made that impact the parts you changed, as well as to merge the upgrade changes into your modified files.

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