Changing Themes – What To Watch For

[Tim.S]

Hi there:

I have a site that's been using the older Minimum Child Theme version 1.0.1. Its all updated and works well, but I wanted to try something such as eleven40 Pro which I've used for other sites. With this proposed change in mind, I have a demo - sandbox account setup on a server to test this change. We've cloned the current site and have downloaded the eleven40 Pro theme. Before proceeding asking a few questions are in order.

Are there best practices concerning changing a theme besides making backups and/or going the sandbox account? Yes I do realize the themes are different. Off the top of my head here are a few things I could think of:

1. Make sure the site is cleaned up - This means the standard you should be doing anyways stuff such as getting rid of unused plugins.

2. Make sure all remaining plugins and the core genesis is up to date - Once again, this should be done anyways

What else should I be looking for in general? Obviously I can change theme and then work on adjusting the new theme to reflect the old site, such as changing where the side bar is, etc... But perhaps there are other general considerations I need to make.

Thanks
Tim

PS: I've include the url to the live non-sandbox site.

http://www.sledtrack.com/

[David Chu]

Hi,
It sounds like you have a very well thought-out plan, moreso than most.

There's not too much to add, although I've got a few ideas for you. They should show up when you try the new theme on the sandbox. Think back, and see if you made (or had someone do) any styling or programming changes on the original site. These changes generally won't make it to the new site if you're changing themes, so they'll need to be copied over to the new theme and possibly adjusted.

For example, on your site I see some HTML tables, those 4 boxes on Home. As years go on, there is less and less done using tables. Instead, they'll write CSS that makes DIV's or other elements act like tables. That means that people don't usually write much styling code for them unless they're very thorough - it's like writing for backward compatibility.

If you have special styling for theme or other things, it may need copying to the new site. I'm just finishing up a site where the client upgraded from his original theme to the Pro version. He had forgotten how much custom CSS that had been added to his theme, so this stuff needed to be threaded carefully into the new theme, which made a simple upgrade into a fair amount of work. He also had custom PHP code that did not work in an HTML5 context, so I fixed all that, and tada, Bob's your uncle. 😉

Cheers, Dave

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Dave Chu · Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers

[Tim.S]

Dave

Thanks for the insights. Now that you mention it, I did check for customization notes and found a few items we'll have to address. (I might have forgot otherwise.) Overall I went ahead and changed the theme and then adjusted 90% of what I could identify and it went smoothly.

I hear what you are saying about those tables. These are created via a plugin which will be updated as you recommended.

Thanks for the help!

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