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Benefit: Having a website with a unique look and feel is critical for effective branding.
Problem: Changing theme files induces maintenance requirements: the new files must be saved and archived externally.
Practical WordPress Tip: Rename modified themes so they do not conflict with the original theme.
Here’s how:
- If you’re actually using the modified theme, temporarily switch to another theme.
- Copy all of the original theme files into a new folder.
- Rename the theme in the style.css. Here’s a good explanation of theme renaming from the Queen of Kludge.
- Upload (if necessary) the newly named theme and select it.
Why: This is tip is along the lines of “Programming is easy… but software engineering is really hard!” A good way to see why finding a way to keep modified files separate is to think a bit about how much trouble it would be to go back through your modified, unique and totally spiffy theme… if you had to redo it all from scratch. Think about whether you could even recreate it from scratch!
These kinds of activities are almost obvious… especially in hindsight. Even for experts who know they should be renaming a modified theme… too often in the interest of haste… it doesn’t get done. Often resulting in tears later of course.
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{ 2 comments }
While I didn’t have to learn this the really hard way, I did learn it the dumb way. I spent a day or two modifying the default theme in Wordpress. While I put the modified theme files in a renamed folder, I didn’t change the name of the theme, and ended up with two different themes with the same name and information in my Wordpress control panel.
Since all my Wordpress sites are either modifications of other themes or fresh themes that I code up myself, I had to learn this lesson early!
Sean´s last blog ..Viva Blog Vegas
I did that too.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Startup Weekend Women 2.0 August 29, 2009: Prototype
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