Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Gina Bégin
Courses Plus Student 8,613 PointsIs the only way to export a Wordpress theme via FTP? Or is there a plugin or native way?
I tried searching plugins and Google, but it looks like there might only be FTP or paid plugins, so I thought I'd ask:
I am using Studiopress' Cafe Pro theme, which is a child theme of Genesis. I made changes to Cafe Pro (coded in some new widgets and such; minor things) and I am afraid that even though it's a child theme, Studiopress might do updates to Cafe Pro itself and I will lose the code work that I did (correct me if I'm wrong). So now I'm looking for a way to export the theme as it is now, with the changes I made, so I can create a secondary child theme out of it.
Am I on the right track? If so, are there free plugins or native ways to do this, or do I need to connect via FTP?
3 Answers
Sue Dough
35,800 PointsNo there is more ways. The child theme will be fine as long as the authors follow basic wordpress standards. You should always update in a staging environment though to make sure. You can use FTP or SSH. You can also go into file manager in Cpanel and navigate to the folders you need. Then you can click the "compress" icon and compress to a ZIP file. Then click the refresh button in file manager and you will have a ZIP of your theme etc ready to download. Then click the download icon. You could also use a backup plugin.
Laurie Williams
10,174 PointsYou can use the duplicator plugin which will make a clone of your site. Then you upload the zip file with FTP and run the install. Make a clone of your site and use it for staging before you change anything on your live site. It's really awesome. I use it a lot.
Laurie Williams
10,174 PointsAs far as losing changes you made to your theme, you won't lose them if you make a child theme.