modifying themes for dummies?

zalm
(@zalm)

21 years, 1 month ago

i’m new to wordpress but not to css. i installed 1.5 for the first time last night, and i wanted to play around with the stylesheets.

first, i was unable to modify any theme files from the theme editor. the message at the bottom of the screen said, “if this file was writable, you could edit it.” do i need to reset the permissions to the theme files? if so, what permissions should i use?

second, i tried modifying the theme files in dreamweaver and then replacing the files on the server. i found that any modification i made to the default theme style.css file, even if it was just a color change, resulted in the entire stylesheet showing up as the name of the theme in the “themes” page. i’m certain that all the comment tags and style tags were closed properly.

i tried uploading a copy of the default theme with revised headers so that i could play around with the styles in a copy of the theme, and i had the same issue with the entire stylesheet showing up in the theme name.

i created an empty theme whose only element was a style.css file containing only the sample header that i copied and pasted from the codex theme development page. when i uploaded that, i once again had the bizarre theme name issue.

obviously, i’m doing something wrong, but i can’t figure out what it is. any suggestions?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

gvtexas
(@gvtexas)

21 years, 1 month ago

Set the permissions of any theme file you wish to edit from the admin pages at 666.

Did your modified stylesheet retain the top portion between the comment tags, the portion that identifies what theme the stylesheet goes to? Without that you’ll get the odd behavior you mentioned.

Hope this helps!

Mark (podz)
(@podz)

21 years, 1 month ago

“modifying the theme files in dreamweaver “

Please do NOT use dreamweaver.
It breaks stuff.
Really.

Use Notepad++

Dreameaver is a BAD THING for this task.

help-me-please
(@help-me-please)

21 years, 1 month ago

What if you don’t have Notepad++? Will ordinary Notepad do?

Mark (podz)
(@podz)

21 years, 1 month ago

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
700K download

Notepad++ uses syntax highlighting which Notepad does not, so even with CSS it helps to highlight those daft errors we all make

It’s Free – OSS – like WP.

Thread Starter zalm
(@zalm)

21 years, 1 month ago

i’ve reset the permissions, and i can now mess around with the theme editor. so that helps.

knowing to stay away from dreamweaver is definitely helpful. i’m on a mac, so i’m not sure that notepad++ will work for me. will bbedit work?

but i’m actually wondering if my ftp settings are messing with the line-breaks or something. i downloaded a copy of the default theme, changed the theme folder name on the server to “modified”, changed the name in the stylesheet of the version on the server with theme editor to “wordpress default modified” and then reuploaded the unmodified default theme. after all that, the “wordpress default modified” showed up just fine, but the unmodified “wordpress default” displayed the entire stylesheet as the name/description, etc. and when i opened it up in the theme editor, the line-breaks were all messed up.

i found a workaround. i modified the default theme name as described above. then i redownloaded the wordpress install package and uploaded a clean copy of the default theme. that seems to work just fine. it doesn’t explain what was going wrong, but at least now i have something that i can mess around with.

thanks for the help. after reading this latest post, if you have any additional tips they’d be most welcome.

gregorsmith
(@gregorsmith)

21 years, 1 month ago

Dreamweaver can be used, I reckon podz is just hatin’ on the ol’ DW (as it seems to be the thing to do on most design boards nowadays)

You just have to fiddle with the settings so it doesnt rewrite stuff