Multisite – child sites with a different homepage than network

  • Resolved cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)


    11 years, 8 months ago

    Greetings!

    I’ve successfully installed a WordPress multisite network and I’m now getting all the themes and plugins organized.

    I have school website, with each department setup as a child site in the multisite install. The main home for the site has a child theme we designed built off of a parent theme. Each child site (deapartment), as it stands, inherits the same child theme and homepage. I want the child sites to have a different homepage but still link into its parent’s css, functions, etc. For instance, a child site for photography would have a home page (same for all child sites) that loads in content related to just that site, but when I call add_header or footer, I get the parent theme’s header and footer.php.

    If I’m following this correctly, I need a new child theme, of a child theme, that has a different home.php but accesses the defined pages and elements of its parent (which is also a child theme, but the parent to all the new sites in the network).

    I hope this makes sense! Thanks for your time!

    Here’s a diagram to help possibly:
    **Theme**
    —->(Site Theme) Child theme, all the new designs, functions, header.php, etc
    |
    ——–> Each department, which has a different home page, but draws from Site theme for its header.php, footer.php, css, etc
    ——–> same for each new department

    EDIT: from further research this is apparently a “grandchild” theme and may not be supported or necessary. Would I do some kind of conditional check in the regular theme to see if I needed to load in the school’s HOME page or a department’s HOME page?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Well… That depends on your theme, and how you coded the child. Anything you hard code into the theme is, defacto, hard coded. Can’t be changed. But if you leave things to options and settings, you can have the same theme on multiple sites, but all looking different.

    What are you trying to ‘change’ in the header and footer? 🙂

    Thread Starter cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Thanks for your response!

    I’m actually not changing the header or footer at all 🙂 that’s where I’m having trouble because I know the issue I’m having is usually easily solved by wordpress. I want the child site homepage to route to a home.php specifically for all the child sites, but pull in the header and footer.php from the parent’s theme directory.

    So far my efforts (including turning our theme parent into a stand-alone theme to avoid the grandchild theming issue) results in child site pages with no style, no header or footer; just the child site title and subhead.

    I know I’m probably making this more complex than it has to be, I’m just not sure how 🙂

    The department sites are still styled like the main school’s network site, they just need to go to a specific home.php for departments where I can pull in posts and data specific to that department.

    Thanks!

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Okay, let’s step back a minute 🙂

    Do normal themes work on your subsites? That is if you pick twentyEleven, does it work?

    Thread Starter cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Sure does! 🙂

    Our child theme does as well and I can set it to be the default when a new child site is created.

    I’ve tried turning our child theme into a non-child theme and creating a new child for a new department to use but that didn’t go so well.

    Can I keep our theme as a child theme, but find a way to check if I’m on a child site and use a different home.php template? Ie: (notareallink)mysite.com/photography/

    if this current page is (something that identifies a child site)
    route me to a template for all child sites?

    Thanks again!

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Can I keep our theme as a child theme, but find a way to check if I’m on a child site and use a different home.php template? Ie: (notareallink)mysite.com/photography/

    Yes! 🙂 That’s where I was going with this.

    If you need to change the PHP of the home.php, then you can make page templates, and assign the Static Front Page of the subsite to that template.

    But if you just want to use the same theme, why not just make a standard Static Front Page?

    Thread Starter cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Perhaps just confusion on my part 🙂

    I want to make the child site setup as automated as possible for when the school takes over and I was under the impression that a static page for each site would require going into each site to assign it individually? And that this static page couldn’t be a default template page for all the child sites?

    Thanks! 🙂

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Sure can!

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/

    Thread Starter cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Oo Fantastic!

    So I can create a new php template page, departments.php for instance, that utilizes all the setting of the child theme we’re using for the network, and then use this plugin to set the front page to a static page by default, using the departments.php, and each child site will use this same page and I can just pull in blogs/posts/widget data for that child site into the template?

    Thanks so much for all your time and a help on this! It is very appreciated 🙂

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    11 years, 8 months ago

    That’s how it’s supposed to work 🙂 You may have to experiment to get all your specific settings right, but yeah 🙂

    Thread Starter cthulhuish

    (@cthulhuish)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Wow, thanks so much for all your help and really sticking with me 🙂
    It is very much appreciated!

    Thanks again! 🙂

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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