Questions on Avada Child Theme & Compatibility Plugin

This topic contains 5 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  Paolo 9 years, 4 months ago.

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  • December 28, 2014 at 7:05 pm #25698

    vicki
    Buyer
    Post count: 76

    I’m new to GD and Avada, and have installed the theme, your child theme and the compatibility plugin. All are up to date. I’m now going through your documentation and Avada’s to try to understand what style and layout options are powered by GD and which by Avada. I see that I will want to make CSS changes to GD styles and normally I would do that in the child theme’s CSS file of course.

    But since you created the child theme and the compatibility plugin, I’m not sure if it’s safe to edit the css of the child theme or if I need to make a child of the child theme. I don’t want future updates to your child theme or the plugin to overwrite my changes. I’ve searched the documentation but couldn’t find a clear explanation of what the child theme and compatibility plugin are supposed to do, so thought I should check before I get in too deep.

    December 29, 2014 at 1:25 pm #25746

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    Hi viki,

    I have assigned this post to the dev who created the compatability packs but this is what i would say: although the child theme should not have to be updated very often and usually this would be the best place to add style changes because of the limitations of the main theme we have had to do it this way, i am not very familiar with avada but i think it has a page where you can enter your own css in it’s setting, this might be the best place to add that css for now unless you also keep a backup of your child theme CSS file.

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

    December 30, 2014 at 3:36 pm #25863

    vicki
    Buyer
    Post count: 76

    Thanks Stiofan. I don’t think that approach is going to work, because there may be other changes I need to make (functions, etc) so I need a child theme that is “safe” from updates. I suspect that if future updates of Avada mess with your plugin, then you may update the child theme and/or compatibility plugin. So I guess my main question is what that update process might look like and how I should set things up now. I’m particularly concerned about any sort of automatic updates that might happen.

    December 30, 2014 at 4:58 pm #25868

    Paolo
    Site Admin
    Post count: 31206

    Hi,

    I don’t think you’ll ever have any problem, because the avada child theme’s function.php file content is:

    

    <?php
// Add your custom functions below
?>
    

    All functions are in the compatibility plugin. The only reason why we must also have an Avada child theme is to include a customized header.php file.
    

    Autoupdates will only happen after you click on the update button, they will never happen “automatically” without your intervention.
    

    Thanks
    

		
	
    


    

			
				

    

	
    

		December 30, 2014 at 6:18 pm

		
		#25876

		
		
		
	
    


    


    

	
    

		
		
    vicki
    Buyer
    
		
		
     Post count: 76
    
	
    

	
    

		
		
    Yes, I saw the functions file was empty. My main concern was that if I added to it, my changes would be overridden by future updates. I saw the header file and good to know that’s the main reason for the child theme. You’ve added a few CSS rules too.
    

    I looked at the compatibility plugin and it looks like it doesn’t refer to your child theme by name. So maybe the best idea is for me to create a new child theme with my own name, move the header and your CSS rules over and then make my other customizations there. Then I have your unactivated child theme as reference and if you update it in the future I can just copy over the files/rules. Does that seem like it will work?
    

		
	
    


    

			
				

    

	
    

		December 30, 2014 at 6:23 pm

		
		#25877

		
		
		
	
    


    


    

	
    

		
		
    Paolo
    Site Admin
    
		
		
     Post count: 31206
    
	
    

	
    

		
		
    Yes, that should be totally safe and I don’t see why it shouldn’t work…
    

    Thx 
    

		
	
    


    

			
		
	
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