Title: child theme functions.php issue
Last modified: August 21, 2016

---

# child theme functions.php issue

 *  Resolved [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/)
 * I’m trying to upload a child theme, twentythirteen-child, in a zip format. I 
   have done this several times with no problem. However now I am getting this message:
   
   Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /home/studiosahl/siteproject3.wendywainwright.
   com/wp-content/themes/twentythirteen-child/functions.php on line 1
 * The first thing I did was make sure that my child theme functions.php only had
   <?php – then when I received a message (see above) I thought maybe something 
   had changed and so I changed my functions.php to a completely blank file and 
   got the above message again. Am I missing something really ridiculous here because
   I upload child themes all the time?

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296134)
 * Also this is really frustrating because it seems to break the entire site which
   requires a lot of busy work to get back up.
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296140)
 * Sounds like you have some non-visible characters at the very beginning of your
   theme’s functions.php file.
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296144)
 * Do you mean like I need to hit the backspace button to the very beginning and
   then re-save it?
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296145)
 * Yes. Try hitting backspace about 10 times at the very beginning of the file, 
   re-save and re-upload it.
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296148)
 * With or without the <?php ?
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296158)
 * I’ve tried it with and without the <?php – obviously I am missing something small,
   but I normally do this several times a day! Is there something else small that
   I could be missing/doing wrong that happens to people often?
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296204)
 * You can download a pre-made Twenty Thirteen child theme from [here](http://quirm.net/themes/twenty-thirteen-child/)
   if that helps.
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296259)
 * I’ll try that. In the meantime I’m deleting every last everything out of my databases,
   etc., just to clear out the muck. I upload child themes daily, no idea what my
   problem is.
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296292)
 * O.K. So I’ve decided that the problem is not in the functions.php or style.css.
   The problem must be in one of the other files I am uploading at the same time
   for the child theme. For example sidebar-header1.php or footer.php. So my final
   question is if it’s best to start a child theme with just a style.css and a functions.
   php or if it’s fine to load several files in a child theme and one of mine simply
   has a mistake elsewhere that causes this error but in general should be fine?
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296293)
 * In theory, every child theme just starts off with a style.css file. That said,
   I’ve created many a child theme that contains multiple files, so that, of itself,
   should never be a problem. The only thing I can suggest is that you start pulling
   out the other files one by one in the hopes of locating which file causing your
   problem.
 *  Thread Starter [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * (@wenwainwright)
 * [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296389)
 * It still seems totally random and sometimes uploads fine and other times it doesn’t.
   Maybe I’m hitting save too quickly or something.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

The topic ‘child theme functions.php issue’ is closed to new replies.

 * 11 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [wen.wainwright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wenwainwright/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-functionsphp-issue/#post-4296389)
 * Status: resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics