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WordPress

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Posted by Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

Classipress - Child Themes

Hi, I am going to purchases Classipress for Wordpress and am looking for a child theme which would be compatible with further plugins enabling me to add a store and a forum. Does anyone who's experienced have any recommendations for a good child theme ?

I've been looking through the child themes but it's hard to say if they would be compatible, some are compatible with woo-commerce but it's the forum which may prove difficult. In general, if I purchase a child-theme, how difficult would it be to make it compatible with something like the bbpress plugin?

4 Answers

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

Ok thanks Paul,

I've done some further reading and it seems that it's possible to integrate the woo-commerce plugin and the bbpress plugin into the classipress theme without to much difficulty but am not sure if that's still the case if I use a child theme.

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

It shouldn't make any difference. Look at a child theme like this, you're taking a base theme and writing a series of overrides for it. There's no practical difference between editing the code right on the parent theme or editing it on the child. If this is not easy, it's probably that the parent theme is not suitable for child theming.

Take something like Genesis, for example. Genesis runs all its code through a series of theme hooks so you can enable and disable features with simply a add_action or remove_action call. If I want to insert a completely different loop, i just use remove_action to remove the default loop and then add my functionality to a function that then hangs on the same hook we just removed the default loop from.

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

Ahh ok, well I think am going to go through the theme tutorials and have a go at creating a custom child theme, since none of the one's i've found meet my needs and a fair bit of customisation is going to be needed.

Cheers for the feedback :)

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

The only time I use child themes honestly is when I need to hand something over to a client that will probably not be touched again. Normally, I use Genesis for this. The reason being is that they can then get updates and new features without destroying their existing theme and without me having to be bothered to make code updates. It's incredibly valuable at times but has major downside in terms of complexity.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Child-themes aren't standalone themes. They are stylesheets that add-on to the existing stylesheet...is the simplest way to put it.

You can get a WooCommerce child theme because WooCommerce has a stylsheet for all the things like forms, buttons, product pages but, not for themes in general. I'd be careful of child themes for WooCommerce as well as they may conflict with the parent themes styling, the actual themes styling, not the WooCommerce styling.

A child theme is there to make changes to a theme without overwriting the core theme files. This is so that when you update the theme, your changes aren't lost. What happens during update is that all the files are overwritten with updated versions and the non-updated files are also overwritten.

I advise you go an do the WordPress course as you appear to be heading in a direction of great frustration and time not well spent. The course will teach you about child themes and how to build your own theme, so should you desire.

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

That's sort of correct but they're not just stylesheets, you can also use custom PHP in child themes just like any other theme.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Yes correct but, OP is looking to buy a child theme that works with all themes which isn't possible.

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

Thanks for your replys

Sorry I don't think I explained myself to clearly, when I mentioned woo-commerce I was referring to the plugin rather than the child theme.

What I wanted to know was if it is possible to tailor most child themes (especially ones for classipress) to enable a plugin such as woo-commerce or bbpress to run smoothly and if anyone had successfully done this with a classipress child theme and could recommend one.

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

I'm not sure about most plugins, but Woocommerce has a theme integration guide on their site. It's fairly easy to handle.

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at Genesis also since I plan on creating sites for clients in the future once I get my head around this current project :)

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

Thesis is another option people like a lot although I have some issues with how non-standard the codebase is. I've heard the new version is less so but can't speak on it as I've been using Genesis due to the commitment to sticking to the WordPress way of doing things.