How do you customize child themes that won't break when updated to new version?

[drivenj17]

Hi everyone,

I am fairly new to genesis but home to become more knowledgable and use genesis themes for the long term.

I recently started customizing the Parallax Pro theme and was wondering what the best practice is?

I am concerned that my customizations will be overwritten if I receive an update to the child theme.

For example, I want to add another section to the Parallax theme with the instructions here:
http://wpsites.net/web-design/add-more-home-page-widget-sections-to-parallax-pro/

The instructions calls to modify the front-page.php, functions.php and the style.css files. If parallax pro were to be updated and I installed the update, wouldn't that overwrite all the customizations above for adding another widget section to the theme?

I've seen tutorials that suggest to create a custom-style.css file and a custom-functions.php file. Is this the way to do it?

How would I de-couple my customization of the front-page.php as instructed in the link above?

p.s. an additional question..is there any documentation on describing the order of the function calls of genesis themes in general? or is there any tool/debug tool for walking through the php function calls. Just as aid for me to understand how genesis themes works..

Thank you very much for your support 🙂
Eric

[Brad Dalton]

Generally child themes aren't updated as they hold the custom coding so need need to worry.

You you ever change your child theme, you can grab the custom CSS and PHP which is normally added at the end of 2 files and paste it into the new child theme along with any images and js.

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Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[drivenj17]

Hi Brad,

Thanks for your advice and your tutorial on adding the extra section to Parallax 🙂

Which "2 files" were you referring to?

I've gone ahead to edit the child theme files directly and using git to track changes. This simplifies things.

Best Regards,
Eric

[DTHkelly]

2 files: functions.php | style.css

Re: Getting started with Genesis - have you seen this?
http://designsbynickthegeek.com/tutorials/genesis-explained-the-framework

[drivenj17]

Hi Kellylise,

Thanks for clarifying. Yes, i've read through some of nick's tutorials as well 🙂

Appreciate the community support!

Eric

[Author]

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