[wp-hackers] child themes of child themes (grandchildren)

[Mika A Epstein]

Genesis is a managed theme, vs a 'traditional' theme framework. The 
child theme is a whole package, meant to be customized not via the theme 
files, but their in-dash interface. So in this case... you're using 
Genesis wrong.

If possible, use the Genesis tools and edit it that way. When you can't, 
make an mu-plugin that calls the CSS and function changes you need. That 
way, the clients can't hurt themselves too much. Double plus good for 
checking if the active theme is the one you edited for them.

But really once they start making you fork the child theme, then yeah, 
you have a new child theme. It's just shifting how you think about 
themes when you use a managed theme :)

This isn't endemic of just Genesis FWIW, there are other themes that 
don't work with children at all.

Shasta Willson wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 9:11 AM, Otto<otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> It's a sanity thing. Essentially, child themes are fine, while
>> grandchild themes take it a bit too far.
>
>
>
> And yet languages like Java handle inheritance gracefully without such
> limitations.
>
>
>
>>
>> If you need to customize
>> further than a child theme, then you're probably doing it wrong to
>> begin with and should look at alternatives.
>
>
>
> Ok, I'm game... I have clients come to me regularly and say "I want the
> Crystal (Genesis) theme." I said "sure!" and install it. Then they say
> "Oh...but I wanted a dark upper portion, and instead of a slider on the
> front page I want some other custom thing, and by the way can I have this
> other dodad over here.. and...
>
> And by the time I'm done what I have is no longer the Crystal theme, but a
> child theme of Genesis based on Crystal. Which is fine in as far as it
> goes, but obviously if Genesis is updated and Crystal is updated to
> coordinate with the changes my client is left with no upgrade path but to
> pay me more money to update my customized version of Crystal.
>
> Obviously I do use best practices like utilizing the hooks to keep as much
> of the modification in one place as possible, but that doesn't change the
> fact that I'm right back to the situation children were invented to 
> fix: no
> upgrade path.
>
> So what's the "right" way to handle this client's request for
> "Crystal...but not quite."?
>
> - Shasta
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>>
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