Using Child Theme

[mywonder]

Hi Tom,
And I hope with these questions I do not become your problem child 🙂

I’m pretty embarrassed to ask these questions here, and honestly almost emailed you directly, but I figured the answers could possibly help someone else, so I decided to get embarrassed.

So, I really haven’t been doing anything with my WP since I helped with the GP Beta testing you had me do. I logged into WP today and see that my active theme is the GP Child Theme. I also have GP itself not activated, obviously not up-to-date, and my plug-ins must not be either.

I only have a vague memory of why and how I got the child theme, but I remember it seemed like a good idea at the time 🙂 I also have a vague memory of your having an article or a support forum link about using a child theme. Which I cannot find. I did a search on the GP Forum and got 74 pages…

I am wondering, too, if the GP Child Theme I have active is the file you sent me to do the Beta test? I truly believe that is where I left off.

Can you please point me to your information on child themes?

I’m still in a sandbox environment, so not too concerned about this site, but want to go live soon, so I appreciate your help, as always!

Best to you…Meredith

[Tom]

Hi Meredith,

Child themes are useful if you’re adding custom page template or overwriting core page templates.

You can also add CSS and functions to it, but I prefer plugins to do that.

If you go to “Appearance > Editor”, have you added any custom CSS?

[mywonder]

OK, yes, that answers it. I do have some CSS in there that you gave me a long time ago because another company’s social media sharing plug-in wasn’t doing something I wanted it to do. I think it had to do with when viewed mobile. I’ll have to find that thread and see.

When you sent me that file for testing, was it a child theme? Or were we testing add-on updates? I still have the email you sent me with the file, should I forward back to you so you can check?

What I am actually trying to figure out is whether I should update my GP and add-ons? That’s why I was looking to find your article. I can’t figure out, if I update the regular GP how that would even have any effect on the child theme, if the child theme is activated and GP itself is not (I told you this was embarrassing 🙂 ).

If this is actually a WP question and not a GP question, feel free to tell me that and I’ll go research it on WP–don’t want to take up too much of your time!

Thanks, Tom…Meredith

[Tom]

If you’re using a child theme, you’re 100% percent safe to update both GP and GP Premium 🙂

[Jessica]

sorry… back again.

Is there some reason my page content disappeared? Again, it was there before and I had 2 regular pages with previously populating content (About & Contact) but they are blank. by blank I mean: they show the header/navigation & page title but the content is invisible.

What causes this? I don’t see any reason for this to happen and I haven’t changed anything.

Just when I thought I was okay…

[Jessica]

Looks like when I revert back to the main theme (not the child theme I created) the page content returns.

I’m over this. I am grateful for the help but this is getting so frustrating. I have spent 10 hours on this and….

I’m done.

[Tom]

Must be something in your child theme – if you’d like to share the code in your style.css and functions.php I might be able to see the issue 🙂

[Jessica]

New day. Let this be THE day!
The only thing I put in my functions.php file (in the child theme) is for a Soundcloud integration. Even without it, the content on my site is still missing.

did you want me to paste all the code/styles here? Publicly in this thread 😐

[Jessica]

In all fairness (to myself) I’m very used to working with Genesis and creating child themes based on their methods for devs. So I suppose it’s quite possible I’m either missing something I normally would do for Genesis, or there’s another weird setting I mucked up. Based on what I’ve read, it seems like creating a child theme with GP is different. I downloaded your sample child theme and worked off of that. Is there a place on your site that discusses creating a proper child theme to ensure that I’m not missing anything? 🙂

[Jessica]

Just found the article about NOT importing the style sheet into the child theme and I can confirm I NOT done that. All I’ve done is create my own styles to edit certain things that are outside the area of the customizer (which is the bane of my existence and probably better suited for another time).

[Tom]

Maybe zip up your child theme and email it to me at support@generatepress.com? That way I can see if anything in it would cause content to disappear.

Making a child theme with GP is incredibly easy, as GP detects if a child theme is in use and does all of the hard work for you.

[mywonder]

Back to me 🙂

Tom, thanks for your answer, I have updated my GP, all seems well. I didn’t understand that if I updated GP in my themes part of my dashboard, it would be updated, even though the child theme is active, not GP. I didn’t see anywhere I could update the child theme. I hope that by updating GP, the child theme updated, too, is that correct?

Also, I followed your instructions here: https://generatepress.com/knowledgebase/updating-add-ons/
But am wondering–how do I know if they updated? There is a check mark next to my license number, and I did get a message that the license was accepted, but how do I know that I am using the latest version of the add-ons?

Sorry about all the trouble Jessica is having. Tom, is it correct that if she is using a child theme, she ought to be doing all her customizing and content-adding in the child theme, not in the regular GP? I’m really just trying to understand child themes better. I doubt I can help Jessica 🙂 It’s been awhile since I began with that child theme, but I believe I had to start over with my styles once I did begin using the child theme (although may be remembering incorrectly, and trust you will set me straight if I am, so I don’t send Jessica down the wrong rabbit hole).

Best to you, always…Meredith

[Jessica]

@mywonder: The reason I have things in my child theme is so I can write/add custom actions in the functions file in order to prevent losing them in an update. Otherwise, I use the GP customizer as much as I can until a style isn’t doing what I want/need. Then I add my own custom CSS in the child theme stylesheet. – This is a new theme for me to be working with so it’s possible I may be doing something wrong causing the issues. I’m used to working with a different parent theme that requires a whole lot of other stuff to be added to the functions file in order to work – but I’m also not used to work with the Customizer at all (in fact, if I’m being honest, I absolutely HATE the Customer) but WP isn’t getting rid of it so I do my best to adapt. Hope that clarifies what I’m doing/having issues with 🙂

[Tom]

@mywonder: The child theme will never be updated, which is a good thing. Updating means deleting and re-uploading, and we don’t want to delete your custom code in the child theme.

You can compare the version numbers with the latest posts here: https://generatepress.com/category/development/

Using a child theme only means you can add custom functions and CSS and it won’t be lost when you update. You can still use GP to customize your site 🙂

[mywonder]

Tom, may I just clarify to be sure I am doing this correctly–I have GP and GP Child theme in my Appearance, Themes. I keep the Child Theme activated and I keep the regular GeneratePress updated. I never update the Child Theme. But since the Child Theme is activated, the Child Theme is where I am using the add-ons. Is this all accurate? Because Jessica, above on this thread, said she was customizing the regular GeneratePress, I believe.

And is the generatepress_child(2) the most current blank child theme? And…I just put that one on a new site and I found it by searching a thread in the forum. Is there a direct way to find it on your site?

One of these days, I’m actually going to point you to a finished site 🙂

Thanks for your help…

All my best to you…Meredith

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