Comments on: Ian Stewart On Child Themes - Part 1

By: Parent/Child Themes in WordPress: The Future of WordPress Themes « Lorelle on WordPress

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:03:30 +0000

[...] Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: Child Themes: What Are They? | Wordpress - easy as 123

Child Themes: What Are They? | Wordpress - easy as 123 — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:40:15 +0000

[...] Stewart explains in a little more depth what child themes [...]

By: WordPress News: WordPress 2.7 New Login, WordCamp Australia, WordPress 2.6.5 Security Update, BuddyPress, and More | The Blog Herald

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:20:25 +0000

[...] Weblog Tools Collection - Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: WordPress 2.7 Release News and Links « Lorelle on WordPress

WordPress 2.7 Release News and Links « Lorelle on WordPress — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:14:54 +0000

[...] Weblog Tools Collection - Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: WordPress Wednesday News: Beta 3 Released, WordCamp Australia, No WordPress 2.6.4, and More | The Blog Herald

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:44:12 +0000

[...] Weblog Tools Collection - Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: Rundum erneuert ‹ dreitehabee

Rundum erneuert ‹ dreitehabee — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:47:22 +0000

[...] Thematic: Was man hier sehen kann, ist auf dem Thematic-Framework aufgebaut; Ian Stewart nennt das Child-Theme. Tatsächlich sind das Modifikationsdaten, die das Aussehen (und Verhalten) einer bereits [...]

By: WordPress 2.7 News « Lorelle on WordPress

WordPress 2.7 News « Lorelle on WordPress — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:24:57 +0000

[...] Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Beta 2, Danger WordPress Faker, and More WordCamps | The Blog Herald

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:16:57 +0000

[...] Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Soon, Security Upgrade, PodCamp-WordCamp Hawaii, PollDaddy, and More | The Blog Herald

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:54:11 +0000

[...] Child Themes in WordPress 2.7 - Part 1 and Part 2 [...]

By: Jacob Santos

Jacob Santos — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:57:19 +0000

There is another reason to use child themes. I wrote about on my blog, but I’ll summarize here. With WordPress 2.7, you will be able to upgrade themes located on the Themes Extend on wordpress.org. If you modify your themes that you downloaded from that site and upgrade, you will lose all of your modifications. By creating child themes, you don’t have to worry about that. You can edit the files you need and still get updates from the files you don’t.

By: Carson

Carson — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:34:09 +0000

I can see benefits from child themes for serious developers, but if I wanted to take a base theme and just change the stylesheet to suit myself I would simply rename the base style.css file to base_style.css and then modify style.css. The base stylesheet is always there if I need to refer back to it.

On the “upgrade-readiness” offered by child themes: What if the upgrade to the parent theme changes some of the html class and/or id names or adds new ones? If so you have to make some changes to your child theme to maintain the style of your site.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:13:38 +0000

Andrea is correct. The Sandbox Designs Competition was really the follow-up to Alex King’s WordPress Styles Competition, but I appreciate the nod by Ian.

By: Kerry Webster

Kerry Webster — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:17:37 +0000

His responses were so long…
Should be “His responses were so thorough…”
Nice interview. This is a great aspect of WP that is starting to catch a little fire. Even though it has been around awhile the uses being championed by a few key designers is great. Thanks for the info.

By: Andrea_R

Andrea_R — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:20:38 +0000

I poked around a bit to try and find out, but I think it showed up in or shortly after 1.5 when themes were moved from smarty templates and just using stylesheets, to the full blown template sets we see now.

Man, I remember those “just a stylesheet” days.

By: Andrea_R

Andrea_R — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:16:35 +0000

Yep, that’s what I got out of it too.

I like being able to use the template files from another theme and my own stylesheet, but I’m not sure how often I’d use a full child theme.

I tend to rip themes apart and make them my own anyway, so I don’t often follow through with a theme upgrade.

I could see how it would be useful though.

By: demetris

demetris — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:46:29 +0000

Good interview! Thanks, Ian and Jeff.

I played a bit with child themes and child templates in 2.7, and they work as they are supposed to, but I don’t find this possibility as hassle-free as what is available now.

Here is why — please, someone correct me if I got anything wrong.

In child stylesheets, for example, you can take advantage of the cascade, override parts of the parent stylesheet, and keep using the rest as it is improved/changed/fixed from one upgrade to the next.

Child templates, on the other hand, are cut off from the equivalent templates of the parent theme, which they override. If you want to keep up with changes/fixes/improvements in the parent template, you will have to run a comparison/merge every time the parent theme is updated. The real advantage, as I understand it, is that your modifications cannot be overriden by accident, which can easily happen if you modify a template of the parent theme in place.

Greetings,
Demetris

By: The Problem with Child Themes | Pat Dryburgh

The Problem with Child Themes | Pat Dryburgh — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:22:26 +0000

[...] a lot of talk about child themes these days. As the designer of two child themes for the Thematic theme [...]

By: Randy

Randy — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:06:56 +0000

I have to say I’ve been avoiding reading about Child themes because I thought I might like them and thus end up spending countless hours reading about the possibilities and how-to’s and what not…

Honestly though, how freaking simple is that.. I love this and it fits perfect for me. I have a base Template that I’ve created which really only get updated once a month while my client themes seem to be changing regularly with every whimiscle idea they have.

I think with the Overwrite made available were going to start seeing a lot of good things from the WP theme community…

extra question for anyone,,,

Is their any talk of a full blown Official WP desktop app any time in the future…(marsEdit is great, but im talking about full admin, Database and Posting features… just a thought)

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:26:01 +0000

I was expecting to be corrected on that. Has it been there since the beginning?

By: Andrea_r

Andrea_r — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:53:36 +0000

Child themes, just by using the stylesheet and an existing template, have been around a lot longer than that.

The newer variations allow for their own function.php file, which is more of the fuss.