renamed theme and now ignores index.php and uses page.php instead

  • I had been using the free Academica theme, but had customized it, and then it auto-updated and wiped out all my customizations! So I renamed the theme with my own name, and after that, the theme seems to ignore the index.php on the home page. I had to put all the widgets I had previously aligned on the home page to go in the left and right columns of page.php in order to see them on the home page (which means any other pages using my default template get all the home page widgets). And it also lost the photo slideshow that was on my home page (which code is in index.php).

    How can I get it to go back to using index.php for the home page? I’m wondering if it’s not picking up some of the theme options that are set in the theme admin section now that I renamed the folder and the theme itself?

    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Thanks!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Never customize a parent theme. Use a Child Theme. Also backup all site files and the db regularly and prior to any important site changes (like changing a theme)

    Thread Starter LauraSuzy

    (@laurasuzy)

    I thought about using a child theme, but I was afraid that if the parent got updated, it would end up changing my child, even though it wouldn’t overwrite my style.css. The last update they totally changed their template names and everything! Some files completely disappeared… it was a dramatic update.

    So… given that I *didn’t* use a child theme (I customized this thing a year ago and only learned about child themes last week!)… what’s the best way to see if I can fix it?

    One thing I don’t understand is how the theme’s admin files (which add a menu to the left side of the dashboard so you can set theme customizations, such as which files should be included in the slideshow) actually save the settings. Is it stored in the database? And if so, I wonder if there’s some remnant of the old theme name in there somewhere that I need to also update to make it work? Any idea what tables or wordpress api items I might look in?

    If you did not make a backup, and your host cannot provide one, the files are overwritten and are lost.

    Thread Starter LauraSuzy

    (@laurasuzy)

    I have the backup. Right now, the site is running on my renamed version of the old theme (prior to the update that broke the way everything looked). The Academica theme still exists in a separate folder, too.

    Since the Academica theme still exists on the system, I realized that there are places where the function names, special widgets, admin settings, etc. would be still using the Academica naming system. I went through all the php files and changed the names, and was able to at least save the settings as a distinct value related to my new theme, but the home page is still using page.php instead of index.php (which calls the slideshow).

    I wonder if the presence of the old and updated Academica versions in my themes folder could be messing me up?

    Thread Starter LauraSuzy

    (@laurasuzy)

    I have located the wp_options table and see that my theme’s admin pages are correctly saving the option values to the database, but my theme was not retrieving them. There was some code in the page.php file setting variables using get_options, and I just changed that because get_option itself seems to retrieve the correct value.

    So I was able to get my site looking the way it should again, however, I still have no idea why it’s ignoring index.php!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘renamed theme and now ignores index.php and uses page.php instead’ is closed to new replies.

Tags