Parent theme & child theme

Perhaps the following information means I should be ok? https://docs.generatepress.com/article/using-child-theme/#installing-a-child-theme

When I moved to the child theme I did lose somethings (the copyright part at the bottom for example). That makes sense.

Another question I have is: I moved over to the Premium Marketer Template whilst I was still using the Parent theme, was that a bad thing to have done?

Hi Paul,

The doubt I have is: When GP has a Parent theme update, will something weird happen? Because perhaps these changes I made to the Parent theme will revert back to some standard GP settings.

I'm not exactly sure what you did with step #3 and step #5 but the quick answer is, it depends.

Marketer theme from the site library, to put simply, is compiled setting for GP Premium features + plugins + custom CSS on top of the default style for the theme.

Now, if on step #5, the child theme you've added comes with style.css pre-filled with styling, that can override whatever came w/ Marketer because child theme CSS normally wins in precedence over Site Library template's CSS.

Aside from this, PHP snippets from child theme's functions.php can affect how the site looks as well.

Thanks for the quick reply. In step #3 and step #5 I was only doing stuff in customizer. I didn't add any Additional CSS. It was just basic things like changing colours, typography etc.

You said 'Now, if on step #5, the child theme you’ve added comes with style.css pre-filled with styling'

The child theme I downloaded from Generate press - https://docs.generatepress.com/article/using-child-theme/
It wasn't a special custom child theme. It was the one GP links to use.

You continued 'that can override whatever came w/ Marketer because child theme CSS normally wins in precedence over Site Library template’s CSS.'

When I did the switch everything was pretty much the same (apart from the copyright bit and logo). I don't think the GP Child theme had any CSS that over-rided Marketer theme.

You said: PHP snippets from child theme’s functions.php can affect how the site looks as well.

Again, I used the GP Child theme downloaded from that link above.

Does that information help you determiine if I'll be ok with parent theme updates? Or is it best I just delete everything and start again from the beginning? I haven't actually done that much, I just bought GP a few days ago, so it's not the end of the world. But I'd prefer to find away to check if I'll be okay without the start again option.

Thanks!

FYI I just checked the Child Theme functions.php - It's empty. Nothing was added to that.

Hi there,

the Marketer theme, like many of the Library Sites loads some CSS into the Customizer > Additional CSS.... which is stored in the Theme options. So that styling would have been 'lost' when you switched to a Child theme. You can disable the child theme, copy the CSS from the parent Additional CSS and move it to your child theme.

Other than that the only other changes 'should' have been those mentioned in the Using Child Theme Doc.

Parent Theme updates in the future won't overwrite your changes made to the Customizer or those in the Child Theme.

I understand it a lot better now. I went to the Live Preview of the Parent Theme and looked at the additional CSS. Yes, there was some CSS (like some shadowing around boxes) that I copied back into the Child. Thanks for the help!

Glad we could be of help