Comments on: WordPress 2.7 Theming May Change Everything

By: Design Intellection

Design Intellection — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:46:09 +0000

[...] initiated a new feature for WordPress themes that will be rolled out with version 2.7: Child themes. You can think of it as a cascading theme hierarchy.For example, say you download a theme (parent [...]

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:56:32 +0000

Hi there Ian. I’ve been dabbling with WordPress for a while now, but didn’t know anything about child themes or thematic! Can’t say how pleased I am! This will make WordPress really fun!

By: Guy

Guy — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:21:58 +0000

There’s a discussion about combining WP child themes (in this case Sandbox, although I plan to use Thematic as well) with the Blueprint CSS framework on my blog here: http://www.arciris.com/latest/design/creating-wordpress-themes-with-blueprint-and-sandbox/ – I wasn’t going to comment here as I thought it was a bit spammy but as you say that people are not really talking about this Ian, I thought I’d chip in my 2 (euro) cents.

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:09:19 +0000

Does this mean you can use one theme for the home page, and another theme’s look for the single page?

By: Announcing the Notes Blog Theme for WordPress 2.7 | tdhedengren

Announcing the Notes Blog Theme for WordPress 2.7 | tdhedengren — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:52:53 +0000

[...] is great news for theme developers, something others have talked about during the last few months, and I’ve been following it closely myself. You can do a [...]

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:59:16 +0000

No problem, Marti. Thanks for letting me know, you’re reading along!

By: marti garaughty

marti garaughty — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:53:35 +0000

Hi Ian, I’m a new subscriber to your blog and now a fan of your work. Reading the tutorials and concepts behind child themes for WP opens up so many possibilities to those of us who are stronger at graphic design than coding. I can’t wait for WP 2.7 to be released. Also thx for all the detailed info and inspiration!

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:23:28 +0000

If you want to change the contents of the right column, it’s widgetized. If you want to change it’s position, you can use CSS. There’s some sample styles in the Thematic theme directory.

By: Alex Irving

Alex Irving — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:05:55 +0000

I am a WordPress newbie with advanced beginner XHTML/CSS knowledge and having a fun learning experience. This has also brought me into the world of PHP where I am a total newbie beginner.

I have installed WordPress 2.6 on a hosted server and it works as it should. I have installed the ‘Thematic’ template and created a ‘child theme’ containing a functions.php and style.css files. What a great invention. Works brilliantly.

Now I want to change the right column . . . hmmmm. I gather from your post and the comments that WP2.7 may well preclude the need to edit core theme code and replace it with my own HTML and PHP. and if I understand what you have said that I might be able to use some code in functions.php to also accomplish that as well.

Can you steer me in the right directions on how to accomplish via functions.php?

Many thanks to the pioneers.

Alex Irving

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:34:24 +0000

Benedict Eastaugh's thoughts on Child Themes in WordPress 2.7.

By: Benedict Eastaugh

Benedict Eastaugh — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:30:23 +0000

Well, part of the problem may have been the serious limits on its functionality. Being able to use an extra stylesheet isn’t really a big deal; there are hundreds of ways of doing it without using a child theme. There’s also the question of which features are written up when new releases of WordPress come out. I think the important thing now is to ensure it’s properly promoted from here on out, and get some buzz around it before 2.7 is released in November. I was planning on writing it up in a little detail, and if other people do the same, perhaps the idea will take hold.

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:20:07 +0000

I’m kinda curious why it doesn’t get more press. And/or why it hasn’t in the past. Outside of Scott Wallick, I haven’t found anyone talking about it.

By: Benedict Eastaugh

Benedict Eastaugh — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:48:02 +0000

Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.

You’re welcome; hopefully once 2.7 comes out, and it gets a bit more press (many thanks for helping with that), it will help and encourage people to keep on top of their theme upgrades.

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:32:04 +0000

I don’t know how many times I’ve bumped into the “if I upgrade this theme all my changes will go away”.

This is it in a nutshell. Even for me—here on ThemeShaper. Why should I have to tweak some custom theme here when I make an awesome change to Thematic? I just re-upload Thematic and I get the changes too.

… Although I have used Thematic as a base theme for customization when I had to do some more custom work. But WordPress 2.7 would have made that customization quicker, easier and safer as I could have just edited 2 files.

By: Kristin K. Wangen

Kristin K. Wangen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:36:59 +0000

I’m going to test out 2.7 – bleeding later today; I’m just as excited about this as you are, Ian.

It will also get a lot easier to help people customize themes; I don’t know how many times I’ve bumped into the “if I upgrade this theme all my changes will go away”.

There’s a lot of benefits not having to touch a theme’s core file to customize it.