How can I streamline the Kerygma theme by removing unused architecture elements?

[Christian Presley]

Hello! Thanks for a great theme. It’s allowed me to do in mere hours what I have not been able to accomplish so for with weeks with other themes.

I’ve used Kerygma to create a very custom Questions and Answers website, and it can be seen at http://bluepresley.com/qa.

I chose the theme simply because I need the 960 responsive skeleton that drives it. The only thing that this site will ever use from the architecture is the “Default (page.php)” template.

I noticed that there are a lot of great options in this theme that I simply will never use. Since I’m obsessed with optimization and performance, I wonder if it’s possible to remove most of this stuff without breaking anything?

1) Theme options – I resisted the temptation to use this as I like to keep everything in my css files for full control. Since I’m not using this at all, can this be extracted? I noticed the calls to the functionality in lines 21 to 28 and 77 to 86 of the functions.php file. If I delete that, and then delete the files and folders that it references, is there any chance I could break something I’m not aware of?

2) Custom post types – I won’t be using these either. I’d like to delete lines 115 to 118 as well as referenced files.

3) I’m still debating the widget section. Currently I’m just using custom and default text block widgets.

In any case, that would be my initial plan to move forward streamlining the architecture for my needs. As you know the code better than I do, am I missing something that I could be breaking by moving forward?

And finally, let me ask this question from a different direction.

I created a Kerygma child theme that only uses the page.php. Perhaps it would be easier simply to copy over the Kerygma style.css file and create a new parent them rather than hacking away at Kerygma? Since I’m using just the responsive styling and default wordpress plugins, is there anything else I’d need to migrate over to keep the functionality I have in tact?

Very sorry for such a deep support question this early in the morning! 🙂 Please feel free to be at technical as you need to. PHP and I have been friends for more than a decade now!

Thanks!
Blue

[Bill Robbins]

Good Morning Blue,

Great question. It’s something that I’ve been contemplating as I’m considering using this theme as a basis for my store and support site. I’m working on merging them this summer and have been mulling these over in my head for a while.

The short answer is yes you can strip out what you don’t need. The only reason to go with a child theme is to preserve easy upgradability. Since you’re not using a great deal of what’s in the theme, that’s probably not a large concern.

I would probably just create a new parent theme. Just be careful as you remove things so that you don’t create php errors as some of the options are required for the theme in its default state. The ones inside the functions.php file that you mentioned can be removed if you don’t need what they load. Most of the ones inside the theme are in the header and footer.

Due be aware that the fonts are loaded via the theme options, so you’ll need to set those up in the CSS. You can take out the staff and podcasting from the CSS too.

You may have created the first site with the theme outside of the demo. I’m working on my church’s site, but I haven’t had time to finish it up. You beat me to it.

If I can help out, let me know,
Bill

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