Using a Child Theme for SYDNEY THEME (Footer Modification)

Additional Steps for your Sydney Theme website IF YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE YOUR COPYRIGHT IN YOUR FOOTER STAYS CUSTOMIZED FOREVER

This is a quick write up on adding a child theme to your SYDNEY theme wordpress website (only if you used the Sydney theme tutorial).

The reason why you MIGHT want to have a child theme is if you want to ensure your footer copyright never changes.

As wordpress updates once in awhile, the footer also updates. If you do not want to have to change this each time, then you have to do a few things but it could be worth it in the long run.

Note: You won’t lose any of your content or media if you do this. But you will need to update your slider image, slider text, insert your menu, upload your site icon, and change your settings for your header images. So yes, it takes a few minutes but it’s nothing too crazy.

Step 1: Download Sydney Child Theme

  1. Just click this link to download the child theme zip file.
  2. Make sure it is a zip file. So if it comes as a folder (for Macs usually), you need to compress the folder to a zip.

Step 2: Go to Your WordPress Dashboard

  1. Go to your dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Add New
  2. Find the child theme zip file and add it
  3. Install and activate

Step 3: Modify Footer.php

  1. Go to your dashboard > appearance > editor
  2. Find the footer.php on the right hand side and click on it
  3. Click on the proceed button in the middle
  4. Just find the NYC TECH CLUB 2015 in your php code and put in your business name or whatever you want. Do NOT delete anything else. Be very very very very careful not to delete anything else (no period, semicolon or anything or your website will NOT work).
  5. Click update file

The following steps are required update everything how it was before –

TIP: If you need your old settings, you can go back to Appearance > Themes and activate the parent Sydney theme and go to your customize tab and get everything there (nothing gets deleted by you may need to update the customizations for the child theme. This takes less than 5 minutes total).

Step 4: Upload Logo and Favicon

  1. Go to Appearcance > Customize > Site Title
  2. Go to Site Title and click select file and choose your logo
  4. Go to Site Icon and click select file and choose your favicon
  5. Click save

Step 5: Update Slider Images and Text

  1. Go to Appearcance > Customize
  2. Click on Header Type and select NO HEADER for Site header type
  3. Now go back to the Header Area and click on Header Slider
  4. Upload your slider images from your media library
  5. Update the text for the headline and subheadline for each slider
  6. Go to the bottom of this section if you want to update your button for your call to action on your slider page (Update the URL and the text)
  7. Click save

Step 6: Update Blog Option

  1. If you had the masonry grid for your blog post page just go to the blog options tab and click on masonry grid
  2. Change the excerpt length to 20
  3. Click save

Step 7: Font Options

  1. Click on the fonts tab
  2. The only thing I do here is change the body font size to 16 (all the way at the bottom)
  3. Click save

Step 8: Update Colors

  1. If you used the same colors as in the tutorial, you can just follow along once you click on the colors tab
  2. Primary color: #d63737
  3. Menu background: #d63737
  4. Body text: #000000
  5. Sidebar color: #1c1c1c
  6. Click Save

Step 9: Add Your Menu Back

  1. Go to the menus tab
  2. Click on Menu Locations
  3. In the Primary menu drop down > select your menu
  4. Click Save

And You’re Done! Hopefully forever. 🙂

Cheers