Themes
Themes in WPtouch Pro 4
WPtouch Pro allows you to fully customize the look and functionality of your mobile theme. Each theme may be used as-is, customized using the options offered in the WPtouch Pro admin area, or more fully customized using WPtouch Pro's child theme capabilities.
The Basics
WPtouch Pro builds upon the native WordPress parent-child theme relationship to offer its mobile themes (
http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
). The “Foundation” theme is the parent theme of all WPtouch Pro mobile themes and, as the parent, enjoys protected status: It is unavailable for activation in the Themes admin area.
CAUTION: While WPtouch Pro is designed for maximum flexibility, altering its core theme ("Foundation") could easily compromise your WPtouch Pro installation. To customize your mobile theme, always follow the recommended procedure which relies upon child themes, below.
Customizing Themes
Each WPtouch Pro child theme comes with its own set of theme and menu options. Not every theme's options are the same. When a child theme is activated, it will appear at the top of the selection of available themes along with its "active" indicator.
Once active, options for the selected theme will be available through the "Go to the Customizer" button in the "Customize Theme" area in the WPtouch Pro admin panel.
In addition to the "Customizer", additional customizations may be made to each default child theme by modifying its files. The location of each child theme's files are noted with its screenshot in the WPtouch Pro Themes area. The location will be specific to your WordPress installation and server setup.
Depending upon the customization you'd like to make, you may need to modify:
- the child theme's style.css file for styling changes,
- the functions.php file for functionality changes,
- the single.php file for post template changes,
- the page.php file for page template changes,
- or any of the other files for less common modifications.
Creating New Child Themes
The set of default mobile themes bundled with each release of WPtouch Pro may be used as starting points for building custom mobile themes. Choose a starter theme based upon how well its default set of options meets the needs of your vision for your mobile theme. To create a new custom child theme of your own, begin by creating a folder with any name in /wp-content/wptouch-data/themes
After creating the folder, create a readme.txt file and a folder named "default". The default folder must contain a style.css file at a minimum. The style.css can be from the parent theme's default directory. Or, you can add an empty style.css file to the copied theme's default directory. The readme.txt file should contain a Theme Name and must define a Parent theme, as follows:
Theme Name: My Child Theme Parent: Bauhaus
Additional tags the readme.txt file may contain are:
Description: My child theme's description Version: 1.0 Stable tag: 1.0 Depends on: 3.7.3 Author: Your name Tags: smartphone
When you refresh your Themes area in the WPtouch Pro admin panel, your child child theme should display. Click on its name and click the Activate button to activate your child theme.
Using this method of copying child themes allows you to customize your own copied theme as much as you like and be confident that the default child theme (the original "Bauhaus" theme, for example) will remain intact through future updates to the core code.
You may also choose to update your new theme's screenshot by replacing the screenshot.png file with your own. Screenshot dimensions should be 256 by 256px for best results.