We are constant advocates for our customers to improve on Standard. It’s GPL! We love seeing how they customize our product. The theme contains items that specifically make it easier to customize. In fact, we have 70+ tutorials in our support community, most of which give line-by-line instruction on how to customize Standard.
Do we want our customers, like you, to feel comfortable running it unaltered, fresh from the shrink wrap? Of course. The fact remains that we go out of our way to satisfy both user groups, those who want a better closed box, and those who want an open one.
This article is for all you open boxers out there.
Standard Theme 2.7 includes one feature that some regard as an industry norm: the custom.css file. This file is a “safe place” for users of our themes to make style changes to their site, making it their own. Our users love it! But the tides are changing and the sun is setting on the custom.css file. Some of our users have noticed the custom.css is missing in the Standard 3 Preview, which we released a few weeks ago, so we thought we’d elaborate on why there will be no custom.css included with Standard 3.
Going WordPress Native
Much like our lean admin options, we have made a significant effort to align ourselves, and our product, more closely to the WordPress native core. The use of custom.css was a great way for users to apply custom styles to their theme. But aside from simple style changes, it is not very capable. Users generally want to make more modification to their theme than just colors, fonts, etc. They want to modify core theme files to add or remove features to their website. This makes updating to the latest version of Standard very painful as all core theme customizations need to be completely reintegrated every time a new version is released. This is where child themes, a native WordPress theme hierarchy, come into play.
Standard 3 and Child Themes
I cannot stress this enough. Every modification you make to customize your installation of Standard 3 will need to be done as a child theme. 8BIT is planning on providing a Standard 3 Child Theme Kit upon the official launch of Standard 3 to help aid in getting started with child theming. This will allow users to not only make styles changes, but completely change functionality and markup of their theme, while still having access to all the core pieces of Standard Framework. Whenever you, or better yet, whenever WE update Standard from here on out, we can do so without needing to reapply custom.css or needing to re-implement core theme modifications as part of the process.
This is a HUGE reward for very little effort.
Conclusion
We know this is a significant change for many of you, and we hope you know the decision was not made in haste. We believe that once you try it, you’ll like it. You’ll gain a better understanding of the WordPress ecosystem, your website will be empowered to be safely and uniquely modified, updates will be applied with ease, and all of it will be done in better alignment with WordPress best practices.
Please let us know if you have any questions or further feedback on this.
Hallelujah!
Wow!
Will this also mean that we can take out pieces of Standard Theme 3 that we may not like? *Gasp* I know, I know. I’m sorry.
But, for example, I heard you are implementing some of the elements of WordPress SEO by Yoast, which is a plugin I use. I am not exactly sure how you will be implementing it, but if I want to use the actual plugin instead of the way ST 3 has it built in, will I be able to do this?
Add, remove, change… That’s the beauty of true child theming!
You guys are going to rock the blogging world!
This is definitely my favorite thing about Standard 3 (responsive layout a close 2nd place). As someone who customizes themes a lot, this will make things so much easier and also robust. I’m already loving working with the Standard Preview 2, and am excited to see where things are at once the official release comes out. Great job guys! Valiant effort!
THIS!
I would love to take my current theme and turn it into a child theme for others to download.
I have never created a child theme before. Looking forward to learning!
You can definitely do this. The way it works is… The child theme has its own folder in the /wp-content/themes directory right along side Standard. When you install the child, it requires the parent theme to be present in order to function.
Are you guys going to still be offering tutorials and tips in the support forums? The support forums are literally teaching me so much at the moment about customising Standard 2 and I REALLY hope that the same will happen with Standard 3, especially for those of us who are still rookie!
Of course! =)
This is great. Really looking forward to it.
I’m not that in love with the child/parent theme system (especially if I’m creating a theme I want to distribute – it becomes awkward) but it’s the way of the future.
I… can’t… wait… any… more…! You guys are rock stars!
Any advice on where to go to get a great tutorial on creating child themes? I’ve yet to do this yet and am looking for a resource to help me with it.
Looking forward to the next steps for ST! Thanks for great stuff 8bit!
Keith Klingen : :
WPBeginner has a good post on how to get started.
We are planning to release a Child Theme Kit to accompany Standard 3 when it releases.
You guys have a time frame for when 3.0 will be out?? I wanna buy it, but I’m probably gonna wait till 3.0 comes out.
Thanks
how about a better idea? buy 2.0 now and you’ll get 3.0 upgrade for free! in the meantime you can learn the system and start rocking it out!
Do you have an ETA on 3.0 yet?
We are planning on Q2 of 2012.