What is the best way to customize Thematic?
The only recommended way is to create a Thematic child theme.
You should never modify files in the Thematic theme directory. This is because modifications you make directly to Thematic will not survive an update to the parent theme.
What is a WordPress child theme?
As of WordPress 2.7 a child theme is a theme that inherits the style.css, functions.php, and templates of the parent theme designated by the child’s style.css file.
You can easily start one by copying the thematic-sample-child-theme folder from the Thematic theme one level up into the into the themes directory.
Refer to Child Theme Basics for more information on the topic.
I’m new to child theme development. Are there any tools to help me get started?
New to theme development? The forums have got the perfect discussion for you: Useful Tools.
Not so new to development? Please visit this thread in the forums and help those who are by joining in the conversation and adding your favorite tools to the list.
How do I choose a layout for my child theme?
One of the first steps in creating a child theme is choosing a layout. You can browse the layouts that come packaged with Thematic in the “library/layouts” folder. Once you have chosen a layout, import it in your child theme’s style.css. For instance, if you want two sidebars you need @import url('../thematic/library/layouts/3c-fixed.css'); but if you want one sidebar on the right (default thematic) you need @import url('../thematic/library/layouts/2c-r-fixed.css');
How do I customize the look of my child theme?
Whether you want to alter the style of an element or completely remove it from display, CSS is the best way and your child theme’s style.css is where you want to make your customizations happen. You can use Thematic’s dynamic body classes to make changes to specific posts, pages, categories.
Refer to How To Change The Look Of Thematic in the forums. Also look at the body class section of the CSS Page of this guide for more examples using Thematic’s dynamic body classes.
How do I make changes beyond what CSS is capable of doing?
Sometimes we don’t just want to hide something with CSS but remove it entirely. Other times we want to add completely new functionality to our child themes. These things are what our child theme’s functions.php does best. Almost every functional aspect of Thematic is changeable via hooks and filters.
Still not enough… if you desire to drastically change markup as well as functionality, you can add WordPress Templates to your child theme directory and they will override Thematic’s templates.
Refer to these sections of this guide Theme Hooks and Theme Filters
Where are all those action hooks and filters located?
Looking through the Thematic themes’s templates, functions.php, and the library directory can be daunting.
Luckily thematic forum member dwenaus created this incredibly helpful Thematic structure diagram.
If you have any comments or thanks to give then please join this conversation in the forums.
How do I add a header image to my site?
Adding a header image is a popular Thematic child theme customization and it’s discussion is ongoing.
Read more on this topic in the forums, ask questions and add your tips to the conversation.
Why aren’t Page comments showing? How to enable them?
By design, Thematic turned off comments from pages by default. You can enable them on a per page basis. In the admin, add a custom field key of comments with a value of comments to the Page on which you want to have comments displayed.
All of my questions weren’t answered here. What Next?
Search the forums for topics that may have discussed the questions you have. If your search is not productive please feel free to create a new topic for discussion.