Child Theme Questions (with premium theme)

Ok, I have some more specific questions that still aren’t clear for me.

1. Would WORDPRESS updates themelves ever overwrite anything or break my site in a normal situation?
Especially since I’m not using a theme that comes bundled in the WP install. I’ve always done the updates to my sites and never had anything change. I assume WP updates don’t affect the theme files. Is there something new with 3.0+ re this? Can I just assume that the only threat of overwriting theme files is if I update my theme itself or parts of it. Is this correct?

2. Understanding child themes would be easier for me if it were just a case of making the changes that need to be made on the child theme files, which correspond to the same ones in the parent. What complicates it for me is that you not only have to make the changes in the child theme files but make them *differently*, apparently, in cases other than .css file and page template files.

Specifically, what needs to be added to the code in the functions.php file? How do I handle that file in the child theme?

And which other files from the parent theme have to be copied or recreated in the child theme and coded differently?

3. Could the avoidance of overwriting be accomplished by checking the changelog after theme updates from Woothemes and just updating piecemeal based on the changelog files? Theme updates don’t tend to be too frequent nor sweeping, in my experience…What is the downside of this method?

Thanks for any answers you can provide on this!

Michelle

This, below, is the part I was referring to re #2. Maybe don’t need to worry since i’m not a theme developer and it’s just suggesting how to incude extra functionality if I wanted to?
//

TIP FOR THEME DEVELOPERS. The fact that a child theme’s functions.php is loaded first means that you can make the user functions of your theme pluggable —that is, replaceable by a child theme— by declaring them conditionally. E.g.:

if (!function_exists(‘theme_special_nav’)) {
function theme_special_nav() {
// Do something.
}
}
In that way, a child theme can replace a PHP function of the parent by simply declaring it again.

Referencing / Including Files in Your Child Theme

When you need to include files that reside within your child theme’s directory structure, you will use get_stylesheet_directory(). Because the parent template’s style.css is replaced by your child theme’s style.css, and your style.css resides in the root of your child theme’s subdirectory, get_stylesheet_directory() points to your child theme’s directory (not the parent theme’s directory).

Here’s an example, using require_once, that shows how you can use get_stylesheet_directory when referencing a file stored within your child theme’s directory structure.

require_once( get_stylesheet_directory(). ‘/my_included_file.php’ );