U-Design and Child Themes

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mandarineweb October 8, 2012 at 1:16 pm

Notice: this information was written when Microthemer version 2 was current. On Dec 26th, 2014 version 3 was released with a completely new interface. Some of the information may be redundant, but as much of the functionality remains the same in version 3 we haven't deleted this post.

Hi there,

I am just starting with Microthemer today. I use U-Design extensively, always working with a Child Theme.

On a new site I am trying out Microthemer and will save the finished article as, for example, “Security Theme”. My question is, does this new theme work like any other Child Theme i.e. I only need to update the Parent when updates are available?

Many thanks,

Andrew

Sebastian October 8, 2012 at 2:04 pm

Hi Andrew,

Yes, you just need to update the parent theme when updates become available.

Microthemer works by including an alternative stylesheet in the head section of your pages (active-styles.css). It really makes no difference to Microthemer whether a parent theme or child theme is active. It will do the same thing.

Thanks for trying Microthemer!

Sebastian

mandarineweb November 11, 2012 at 11:04 am

Hi Sebastian,

My apologies for being quite rude when you posted the “update” to the U-Design theme on Andons’ forum; I was just surprised that you didn’t notify your own customers directly.

OK! Question!

I bought Microthemer because;

1) U-Design is my “theme” of choice, given the amazing support BUT
2) I have purchased other themes where I like the “out of the box” visuals (and certain functionality)

What I HOPE to do is to make a non U-Design theme “active” in WordPress; use Microthemer, with a U-Design “blank” and to, after tweaking, EXPORT the non U-Design theme as a “U-Design theme”.

Does Microthemer do that?

In effect, I am trying to shortcut the merging of two different themes; I want the CSS Style of one theme with flexibility and functionality of U-Design.

Any advice please?

Regards

Andrew

Sebastian November 11, 2012 at 4:57 pm

Hi Andrew,

Regarding notifying customers directly whenever I update a Theme Pack (BSMT), I hadn’t actually considered how useful that would be until you raised the subject. From now on I will start notifying customers who have signed up to my mailing list about such updates.

Regarding your current goal of merging elements of two themes, I’m not 100% sure I know what you mean, but I’ll try my best to answer your question.

If (as you say towards the end of your post), you just want to modify U-Design so that it has the appearance of another theme you like the look of, you could certainly achieve this with Microthemer but I’m not sure how the method you’ve suggested would work/help.

If you activate a non U-Design theme in WordPress and then activate the “Blank U-Design” BSMT in Microthemer, you would have to tweak many of the hidden CSS selectors (e.g. #header #div) in order to modify the appearance of the non U-Design theme. This tutorial explains how you might do that. However, having done that, if you then exported the modified Blank U-Design” BSMT and tried to use it with U-Design it would not work with U-Design because it would only be fit for purpose with the non U-Design theme you tailored the CSS selectors to.

As this doesn’t make much sense, I think I may have misunderstood your question. Personally, if I was trying to change the default appearance of U-Design, so that it looks like a different theme, I would have the nice looking theme open in one tab of my browser and U-Design (with Microthemer installed) on another tab. I would then gradually recreate the styles used in the nice looking theme on the U-Design theme with Microthemer. I can’t think of a way in which I would use Microthemer’s import/export functionality to speed up the process, but it could be missing something.

I hope this answer has been of some use to you. If you need additional support with this matter I’m happy to help.

Cheers,

Sebastian

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