Create Directory & Child Theme so I can upgrade?

  • I created my site a few months ago using the Suffusion theme. I’d been putting off upgrading to WP 3.2 but think I need to finally bite the bullet. I’m trying to understand the whole “child theme” concept and am hoping I can copy what I’ve already created into a Child Theme folder (I think?) so I can upgrade. In all the documentation I’m reading it just keeps saying “first create a child directory” with no instruction on how to do that. Any search in codex of “create directory” I get tons of posts about how people could not create a directory (LOL!)

    Can someone tell me if this just means going into my FTP folder and making a new folder in my themes folder and calling it “suffusion child”? If not, how do you create a directory?

    The example goes on to cite copying the parent style.css by using an “@import rule” however I had done a lot of tweaking to my site and would assume that will just import any possible problems that may arise from the upgrade (otherwise why bother making a child to begin with?)

    Would it not make sense to just copy & paste the code from the current ‘style.css’ folder and put that into the new ‘child style.css’ folder and from here on make all changes there?

    And just curious – why would it not just be simpler to duplicate the entire suffusion folder and rename it suffusion child? so you’d have everything you did (images, functions, etc)

    Thank you!!!!

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  • 1) make a directory in your themes folder… call it what you whatever – avoiding caps and spaces.

    2) Put a single file into this directory, call it “style.css”.

    3) Open the file and type in the header and import code. This was taken from the codex

    /*
Theme Name: Twentyeleven Child
Description: Child theme for the twentyeleven theme
Author: Your name here
Template: twentyeleven
*/

@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

    That’s it. Anything you add to this file will override anything in the original css – or add to it. Any other files in this directory (home, index, page, loop, etc) will override their counterparts in the main theme, but if they are not required to be in the directory.*

    To answer your questions about copying everything.. don’t do it. Only put in what you need in the child theme. If you copy everything, updates in the original theme won’t necessarily be taken in the child theme.

    *The exception if the functions file, both are loaded, so if you have the same function in both places, it will break.

    EDIT: sorry, crtenbarge beat me to it.

    Yes, you make the child folder using ftp. However, you should probably name it without using spaces in the folder name: ‘suffusion-child’.

    If you have made changes to the style.css then it would be best to separate them out and put them in the child style.css along with the @import. Save a copy of the full current suffusion style.css in case you need anything from it and then replace it with a fresh unmodified copy. Use this to test that you have indeed found all the changes you made.

    The reason that you don’t want to copy the entire theme is that you would then not get the benefit of any upgrades. All the old code would just override any changes. Copy only the files that you have modified.

    If you are not sure what you have changed and do not have a tool to identify the changes, use this Contact Me page and I might be able to help.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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