Title: Child theme CSS isn't loading, Unicode breaks
Last modified: August 22, 2016

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# Child theme CSS isn't loading, Unicode breaks

 *  Resolved [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * (@southwest)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/)
 * When I switch to a child theme of Lovecraft, using the `functions.php` and `style.
   css` below, my custom CSS doesn’t appear to do anything. Furthermore, the “gear”
   icon to the left of Site Meta links is replaced with a misencoded Unicode character.
 * **lovecraft-child/functions.php:**
 * `<?php
    add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'theme_enqueue_styles' ); function 
   theme_enqueue_styles() { wp_enqueue_style( 'parent-style', get_template_directory_uri().'/
   style.css' ); wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/
   style.css', array('parent-style') ); }
 * **lovecraft-child/style.css:**
    `/* Theme Name: Child of Lovecraft Description:
   Child theme of Lovecraft. Lovecraft "is a beautiful two-column theme for bloggers"
   with "responsive design, great typography, a full-width header image (which is
   replaced with the post thumbnail on single posts/pages), custom accent color 
   support, custom logo support, editor style support, a Flickr widget, recent posts
   and recent comments widgets with thumbnails, and a full-width template". I'm 
   just tweaking it. Author: Spencer Dub (child), Anders Norén (parent) Author URI:
   http://spencerdub.me/ Template: lovecraft Version: 1.0.0 Tags: gray, black, red,
   white, light, two-columns, right-sidebar, responsive-layout, custom-colors, custom-
   menu, editor-style, featured-image-header, featured-images, flexible-header, 
   full-width-template, post-formats, sticky-post, theme-options, threaded-comments,
   translation-ready */ /* Theme customization starts here: -----------------------------------------------------------------*/
   ul.compact_archive li.compact_archive_year{ list-style-type: none; } h2.blog-
   title{ font-color: red; /* (just for testing) */ }  If you go to [my site](http://spencerdub.me/blog/),
   which is currently running this child theme, you can see that the title is not
   red, and if you look at the Site Meta widget in the sidebar, you can see that
   the gear icons are not displaying correctly.
 * How do I fix each of these problems? Thanks.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/)
 * (@stephencottontail)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897341)
 * For your first issue, `font-color` isn’t a CSS property, and you also need to
   target the `<a>` tag instead:
 *     ```
       h2.blog-title a {
           color: red;
       }
       ```
   
 * For your second issue, your theme is (mistakenly?) coded to use `get_stylesheet_directory_uri()`
   to look for the Genericons stylesheet, which fails for a child theme. You could
   replace the code in your child theme’s `functions.php` with this code instead
   to correctly load the Genericons stylesheet:
 *     ```
       <?php
   
       add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'theme_enqueue_styles' );
       function theme_enqueue_styles() {
           wp_enqueue_style( 'parent-style', get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
           wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/style.css', array( 'parent-style' ) );
           wp_enqueue_style( 'child-genericons', get_template_directory_uri() . '/genericons/genericons.css' );
       }
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * (@southwest)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897343)
 * > For your second issue, your theme is (mistakenly?) coded to use get_stylesheet_directory_uri()
   > to look for the Genericons stylesheet, which fails for a child theme. You could
   > replace the code in your child theme’s functions.php with this code instead
   > to correctly load the Genericons stylesheet:
 * That solved that issue. Thank you!
 * > 
 * Oof. You can tell it’s been a long week when I start making up CSS properties.
 * Unfortunately, even when I correct my sloppy CSS as you suggested, I’m still 
   not seeing anything different. My other line of CSS, for the list style, is also
   not working, and that refers specifically to a class that I made.
 * I thought it might be a specificity issue, so I set both of those properties 
   to `!important` just to test that. Even with those properties set to `!important`,
   I didn’t see their effects. It’s as if my custom CSS just isn’t being loaded.
 *  Thread Starter [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * (@southwest)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897349)
 * I looked at the source and checked out the `<head>`. For some reason, this was
   being used as the stylesheet URL:
 * `[…]/blog/wp-content/themes/lovecraft-child/style.css?ver=4.1.1`
 * Note the `?ver=4.1.1` at the end.
 * I don’t know why it was doing this, and if I can make it stop, I’d be happy, 
   but removing the version line from the theme info at the beginning of my `style.
   css` made the stylesheet begin to work.
 * I’ll keep this open for a few days in case anyone can help me figure out how 
   to remove that `?ver=4.1.1`.
 *  Thread Starter [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * (@southwest)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897354)
 * I take that back, it’s not totally resolved.
 * The CSS seems to be cached somewhere, thanks to that `?ver=4.1.1`, and I don’t
   know how to update that cached CSS file. I edit my CSS and reupload it to my 
   server, but if I follow the link in the `<head>` to the `?ver=4.1.1` style sheet,
   it doesn’t reflect my edits.
 *  Thread Starter [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * (@southwest)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897372)
 * Resolved the caching issue. CloudFlare was caching my CSS files. I diagnosed 
   this by selectively purging the CSS file from the cache, and then solved the 
   issue by turning on “Development Mode”, all via the CloudFlare dashboard.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Child theme CSS isn't loading, Unicode breaks’ is closed to new replies.

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## Tags

 * [child theme](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/child-theme/)

 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Southwest](https://wordpress.org/support/users/southwest/)
 * Last activity: [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-css-isnt-loading-unicode-breaks/#post-5897372)
 * Status: resolved