Updates to Theme

[Joel Cornett]

I have photobug version 1.0.2, but in order to make the site work for me, I’ve had to make some changes to theme (all done under guidance here), but I noticed that the current version is 1.0.6. I was wondering a few things

1) What was changed between .0.2 and 0.6? This info, in conjunction with number 2, will determine if I do the update…

2) If I were to do the upadate, what would I have to reset/redo? Any of my customizations (like my menubar with dropdowns, and the gallery only displaying 16 items on the blogroll, all of them in thumbnail format on the actual post page, etc)

3) Is it possible to have updates built into it, so I don’t have to check/manually update, I can just get a notification for it, like I do for plugins?

[Joel Cornett]

also, I would like to add that dropdown menus and ability to control the gallery display would be great features to have built in!

[Bill Robbins]

Joel,

Great questions. I would say if you’re happy with the theme, especially with any customizations that you’ve made, that you not worry about updating. Here’s a copy of the changes from the readme file so you can see what’s happened:

1.0.7

Updated: widget-twitter.php — simple Twitter widget with styling

1.0.6

Fixed: Sidebar.php — call to home sidebar.

1.0.5

Updated: Gave most functions their own files
Gallery Metabox to version 1.5

Added: Translation strings for select objects in options.php

1.0.4

Updated: Options framework to 1.4
Lightbox evolution to version 1.6.10

Added: Redirect to theme options on theme activation

1.0.3

Added: Twitter Widget
Lightbox image captions

In the last month, we’ve just started adding in automated updates to our themes. Part of the difficulty with having automatic updates is they will override any changes that have been made to a theme when the update is made.

The way to overcome that is to use what are called “Child Themes” to house your modifications. They work by having WordPress check the child theme for the presence of a file before loading what’s in the parent theme. If you wanted to change single.php, you would copy it to the child theme and modify it there. WordPress will load it from the child instead of the original. Then when you update, your changes are preserved.

Since Photobug makes such use of images, I’ve been waiting to see what happens with WordPress post formats to decide how to proceed. The new user interface was going to be part of WordPress 3.6, but they just decided to pull it out yesterday for a future release. When they get that settled, I’ll build on what they decide to use to improve the image selection.

If you have any questions, just let me know,
Bill

[Joel Cornett]

thanks for the reply! I think I’ll hold off for now on updating the theme then.

[Bill Robbins]

That sounds good. I will write a primer on child theming in the next few weeks to help people get started with it.

Enjoy your summer,
Bill

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