Tag Archives: Theme Development

Grandchild Themes in WordPress

It’s not possible to create grandchild themes in the same way that you create child themes, but you can use a plugin to dequeue/enqueue stylesheets and scripts, and also override the locations of the main query templates.

It’s obviously not the ideal solution, but there are cases where it may be the least-bad one.

Different Approaches to Building a Theme-based Site

Mark Root-Wiley wrote a great article on the pros and cons of using premium themes, writing child themes and writing themes from scratch. It’s discussed in the context of WordPress themes, but most of it is applicable to other CMSs as well. I think it’s a good introduction to give clients when discussing which method […]

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Determining WordPress Paths and URLs

I often need to include a directory or URL path when writing a theme or plugin, but I can never find all of the different options in one place, so I’m pulling it together from various Codex pages and xref. Constants ABSPATH – /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ WP_CONTENT_DIR – /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content WP_CONTENT_URL – http://www.example.com/wp-content WP_PLUGIN_DIR – /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins WP_PLUGIN_URL – http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins TEMPLATEPATH – /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/themes/parent-theme STYLESHEETPATH – /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/themes/child-theme […]

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How to Build a Template in CMS Made Simple While Maintaining Sanity

I’m not a big fan of CMS Made Simple, but I end up doing a lot of sites in it by request. It’s taken me awhile, but I think I’ve found a way to structure templates that doesn’t make me want to club baby seals out of frustration. First, what I don’t like about it. […]

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