It is hard for anyone starting out with self hosted WordPress theme development to experiment with colors and other style changes, so we thought we would share this Twenty Ten child theme.
It is a simple form with a few lines of code behind it, but it may be helpful without the pains of having to keep uploading files, it will produce the styles text you generate for a child theme or to add to a stylesheet, you can just copy and paste the text, it also allows for custom styles.
Environment
You need a WordPress install we strongly suggest this is a local copy and not a live website, FireFox browser works better than Internet Explorer and FireBug for FireFox
The Theme
Download the theme from here Digital Raindrops Options (1390), this is just a WordPress 2010 child theme and you can install it by file transfer or ‘Add New’, upload and activate the theme and we are ready to go.
If you have no real data with all the different elements, WordPress have made available test data which we can import from Admin > Tools > Import, to get a copy of this file to use you will need to register over at WordPress.org, then login on the themes page and download the themes test data
Lets Go
Once you have activated the theme go to Admin > Appearance > Theme Creator
Expand and contract the different sections and lets do a simple test, we have built in a little sample style to hide the website titles, go to child theme details and check the hide site titles, this has been asked for many times, we do not advise hacking code, so rather than editing or deleting styles we will add a new style.
Next we will make the website background black instead of white change the body to 000 or #000, you can see that the original color is show so we can reset it if we are not happy, press ‘Save Options’
So what has just happened, open the stylesheet section and look at the three boxes, the first you can add your own styles for testing, the second is a stylesheet so you can create a Child Theme, the last is the dynamic styles passed to this themes browser, you could copy these and add to an existing twenty ten child theme or clone.
Lets have a look at the theme, at the top of the admin page there is a visit site link, right mouse and open in a new browser, no titles and a black background, we what else did you expect?
Creating a Child Theme
A picture is worth a thousand words, this is five minutes, best viewed in full window
That’s it have a play and feedback your comments, this has been a lot of work and it will be expanded later to offer more functions, so please visit again, comment, register and leave feedback if you have something to add.
Notices
We do require your feedback to improve our themes and tutorials, please leave your comments good or bad.
Code disclaimer information
If this document contains programming examples, www.DigitalRaindrops.net grants you a nonexclusive copyright license to use all programming code from which you can generate similar functions tailored to your own specific needs.
All sample code is provided by http://DigitalRaindrops.net for learning illustrative purposes only.
These examples have not been thoroughly tested under all conditions. www.DigitalRaindrops.net, therefore, cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these examples.
All programs contained herein are provided to you “AS IS” without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.
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This website is a tool to support and promote WordPress and Artisteer theme development, please support, share and give credit for any benefits you gain from the tutorials on this website.
Awesome, thanks very much!
Thank You, this is great. I will check back for updates.
This is great, makes it easy to change things with Twenty Ten, thanks for this
I’m having a problem when trying to save settings with this. It says file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration I’ve bene told by my host to place a php.ini into the directory with it turned on, which I’ve done, but I still get the error.
503 of theme-styles.php which is return file_get_contents( $filepath);
any advice on how I can resolve this issue?
Hi Zeaks,
The plugin is not meant for Production Servers for this reason, I am looking at a new process as Facebook are changing from FBML to IFrame on the 14th March 2011.
Create a local install using LAMP (Linux) or WAMP windows, then you can just oplead the files to your server, that was the way you are meant to use it.
David
Hello,
It look nice, I try !
Thanks for this theme
Twenty Eleven Theme will be arrived shortly….. please create one for that. please inset a color picker for every setting in themes modification panel. Thank
Nice – thanks. Its a great start for styling 2010 (and 2011??). Audio doesn’t play in youtube but I could follow without it.