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

WordPress Genesis Framework Foundations Configuring a Genesis Child Theme Setting Up a More Complex Child Theme

Posted by Nick Muncey
Nick Muncey
4,144 Points

Question about child themes with Genesis

I've just bought the Genesis framework and the Altitude Pro theme. I'm a little confused as to the protocol with how to use the Altitude theme.

Am I meant to make a child theme of it, or do I just make my code changes and customisations to the actual theme?

All my WP instincts would say make a child theme, but everyone seems to be referring to these premium themes from StudioPro as child themes.

3 Answers

Jessica McGinn
Jessica McGinn
11,378 Points
Jessica McGinn
Jessica McGinn
11,378 Points

Edit your child theme, you'll always have a copy available as you can download it from Studiopress.

I always make sure that I take back-up of my theme files every now and then so that when I make a mistake I can revert it.

It depends how much you're doing but if I'm doing a week's project then I'll do back-ups from live am, back-ups from live pm etc.

Most of the time I do those edits on my local machine using MAMP first and then upload it at stages where I'm happy, making sure that I save the development files and take a backup of the live files before I do an upload.

Just be organised and take a minute to back things up, a lot. Alternatively there are things like GIT to do versioning but you have to have pretty good knowledge of servers to set these things up which I don't so I do it my own way :)

Jess

Jessica McGinn
Jessica McGinn
11,378 Points
Jessica McGinn
Jessica McGinn
11,378 Points

Hi Nick, the Altitude Pro Theme is a child theme for Genesis so it should include everything that would make it a child theme automatically. You should be able to install and activate it and it be as simple as that :)

Jess

Nick Muncey
Nick Muncey
4,144 Points
Nick Muncey
Nick Muncey
4,144 Points

Thanks Jessica.

What if you're wanting to then edit that child theme? Do you make a child of the child? Or just edit the child?