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.
Related
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.
I have been tasked with making a small design change (CSS) to a Prestashop site that used an off the shelf theme.
I know that in WordPress you can make a child theme to put your design changes in which is best practice.
Is there a similar method I should be using in Prestashop? Or alternatively is there anywhere in the dashboard I can put these changes?
If you're building from a default theme, then the correct way would be to go to Themes > Add New Theme > Create New Theme > Copy default-bootstrap and create a new theme.
There are no child themes in PrestaShop (any kind of inheritance system for themes would majorly complicate an already complex system). What you have is what you work with. If you bought a third party theme, then go modify it directly (modify .tpl files, modify global.css, etc.). IF you copied default theme, then work with your copy (just don't work with default theme, it may get updated).
An event better way would be to install compass and modify .sass files (that is the most correctest :D way).
I want to be able to edit the Barceloneta Theme in Plone 5.02a.
One option: Copy the theme in the theming panel. However, the editing looks like this & the css files are missing.
I saw that copying the barceloneta.css file is different then the bareloneta.css that loads with Plone 5.02a. Parts of Plone do not have css applied to them.
I thought about downloading the entire theme from github and editing it and using that. However, I got an error message when I tried this. This could be a possibility but I am probably doing it wrong.
My end goal in all of this is to get my plone 5.02a instance to look like the following:
Has anyone been able to alter the css for Plone 5.02a? I am aware of it's unreleased state as well.
Though the web theme editing is a known issue and is being worked on.
It's mostly a js rewrite of those widgets. You can track the progress, if you care, at https://github.com/plone/mockup/tree/vangheem-resourceeditor
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).
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.