Ims earching all over the site and Im stuck. I have Vantage running on a few sites, works well. I have it fairly dialed in but it isnt a child theme. I have a few edits to the custom css etc… but I understand its important to have a child theme still. I tried to use on before, and things just didnt work, but it wasnt vital so I went back to the master.
I tried it, and I lost a lot of formatting etc… footer logos in the header, all sorts of weirdness. I. This site is live and getting traffic. I need to be real careful on this one.
Should I do a child theme? If so, how would I bring in more than just the style.css file to make sure many of the settings and elements are protected, but still get the updates? Im getting Google updated errors and auther errors and wanted to use your solution I found, but Im stuck.
Hi WholeLifeWell
When you activate a child theme you will lose all Customizer and menu settings. This means you need to head to Appearance > Customize, redo everything there and then head to Appearance > Menus and re-assign your primary menu to the theme’s menu location.
Could the above account for the problems you saw?
You will need a child theme if any theme files are being edited. So in the case of the Google Authorship change it will be required.
Its got to be even more than this. The footer is in the header? The home page is so totally different its weird. The menu is just links on the side. The circle icons dont appear. Its hard for me to even explain. The content is there but seems to be shuffled around visually.
Great and now when I switch back its all a mess. Oh boy isnt this fun.
I went into appearance customize, made a change (it visually looked correct evn though the site didnt), Then I changed itback (I added a period to the site title and then removed it. Saved it. Not the site is fine.
Pretty wild. Makes me feel all confused.
So I will try ot make a child theme, but it seems like Im not able to figure out hwo to keep all the key pieces.
Mailchimp plugin is the new culprit. I deactivate it, but it doesnt actually deactivate, however it seems to affect things. I will manually remove it (last thing I added) and see if it changes things. I added this plugin today, not when I originally wrote the first post so I will go back to try and work it out.
Page elements shifting around the page when activating the child theme would hint at a larger problem. If it’s happening with the parent theme activated you’d need to run through the usual steps of:
1. Dashboard > Updates: run any pending updates.
2. Temporarily de-activate all non-SiteOrigin plugins and re-test: https://siteorigin.com/troubleshooting/identifying-plugin-conflicts/
If you have doubts about your child theme please ZIP a copy and send it through to [email protected] and I’ll take a look.
Your WordPress installation has:
The WordPress Core
Plugins
A theme that’s activated
Try thinking of it in these parts. You can narrow down any problem by working through these elements, de-activating, updating, switching back to default to find the problem.