Messed with child theme and now I'm locked out…

[drledford93]

Ok, I feel pretty stupid right about now. I was just trying to add some code into my functions.php file (copy/paste) but something must not have been put back correctly and now I can't seem to get back into my site.

The site is yourxpotential.com. Is there a back door I can use to reload my theme? Or, something else?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Daniel

http://www.yourxpotential.com

[Susan Nelson]

Hi Daniel,

You can access your site with an FTP or by going through your host's cpanel. You can then upload a fresh copy of the functions.php file (the one that originally came with your theme) to restore your site.

I always recommend that you never edit your functions.php file through the dashboard because one little mistake can take down your whole site. It's better to use an outside code editor and then upload your changes with an FTP.

Let me know if you have questions. 🙂

[drledford93]

Thank you so much, Susan! This is new to me, as if you couldn't tell! 😉

Could you possibly point me to a good tutorial/video that describes the process of customizing the look (more than just backgrounds and colors) of the site and that is specific to the language of studiopress' themes? I found a great one but it was more toward the "Hueman" theme. I wish there was one for studiopress that was this comprehensive.

Any thoughts?

Daniel

[Susan Nelson]

You're very welcome! 🙂

I don't know of a comprehensive tutorial, but you can always check these to find code snippets you might need:

http://my.studiopress.com/tutorials/

Code Snippets

http://my.studiopress.com/docs/hook-reference/

http://sridharkatakam.com/ - This gentleman posts tons of great tutorials on his site. Definitely bookmark this one. 🙂

Hope this helps!

[drledford93]

Thank you! I really appreciate the help. I've bookmarked Sridhar's site...should be a good one.

If you or anyone has the time, I'd appreciate any feedback as to what they see needs to be done at my site. It's probably 90% finished, just some clean up and a few other things to do. My site is http://www.yourxpotential.com. I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone could give. It's my first site, so I'm learning as I go. 🙂

[Gary Jones]

Congrats on getting your first site set-up. Here are some points:

* Broken profile image on the home sidebar.
* 12 uses of an exclamation point on the home page - that's probably 12 too many.
* Re-consider if it's important for visitors to know *when* you posted (calendar - big and bulky), rather than *what* you posted (Recent Posts widget - small and compact titles).
* Are you ever going to link to http://yourxpotential.com/tag/reflux/ or http://yourxpotential.com/tag/epigenetics/ or any of the other tag archives that only contain one post? Do you think your visitors will use your tag cloud links? (Hint: they won't.) Don't automate anything on your home page. Create manual links to your cornerstone content to guide new users towards the call to action that pushes your site's goal.
* You've managed to get folks to your home page - great! So why present around 15 external links on the home page that lead them out of the site?
* Your sidebar profile and your About Me page is all about you, yet your name is not mentioned once...
* As I presume you are the only author on the site right now, a link on your sidebar profile to view your blog posts is going to show the same content as /blog. Redundant.
* Are *you* the most important thing about this site and the goal(s) that is has? For the Coaching services, sure, but for how to generally maximise my mind and body? Probably not.
* Twitter has branding requirements about how embedded tweets should look - yours fail these requirements.
* Install and use Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin - far better for improving SEO.
* The contents of your primary and top menu overlap substantially.
* "YXP" as a site-title is an unnecessary abbreviation. With no site description visible either, I can't tell what the site is about in 5 seconds.
* You have two search boxes - the bottom one is redundant.

Visually, the site is coming along, but you need to think about what the site is trying to achieve, and therefore how you can funnel visitors to make the conversions you're after. If a bit of content isn't helping at that moment of their visit, in that context, to do that, then pull it and optionally replace it with something that is.

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

[drledford93]

Thank you, Gary, for the advice. Many of the items I did know need to be changed but just haven't quite yet. I've had real problems trying to get my pic up for the snippet at the top right.

The title and header are changing very soon. That's why it's like that. I'm not crazy about it but spending a whole bunch of time on it just to redo it in a week seems a bit like lunacy to me.

The calendar is not the best, I understand. It is what came with the theme and I had just left it for now. I'll get on changing that as well as the tags and SEO. I didn't want to really get into SEO until I had 1) plenty of content; and 2) a design that I was happy with and a cleaner design (not there yet, obviously).

I have zero experience with building or designing sites, so I appreciate the patience and help.

[drledford93]

I've started to dig into some of your recommendations, Gary and I've decided I'm just not happy with the footer. I think there has to be a much better way for the placement of things there or what to put there. Opinions?

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

[Gary Jones]

The calendar is a WordPress widget - it's not theme-specific.

re Footer - start with the minimalist approach, of no footer. Now, what content, if any, do you really need to add there, to push visitors towards your site goal? (This might result in different content on the home page than inner pages, and that's fine).

---

WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

[drledford93]

You're right--it was one of the stock widgets that I added bcs (IIRC) it was on the demo theme. I was trying to get mine to look like the demo to start and then slowly improve as I learned. Just hadn't gone the way of the dinosaurs yet.

I'll look at the minimalist footer approach. That's going to be one I have to think over for a while.

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