How to Make Child Themes on WordPress MU 2.9

You can control your MU site's appearance by setting up a child theme for every blog.

In WordPress MU, you can operate a network of blogs on your site. Each blog can be configured in the way the site owner wants, or he can leave it to individual blog owners to modify their sites. Use child themes to restrict the customizations that site owners can make. These themes, present in a blog's directory, take precedence over any theme file in the blog itself. Since blog owners don't have FTP access, any changes they make to the theme will not take effect in the presence of child themes.

Instructions

1. Log in to your FTP account. Navigate to the URL of the blog to which you want to add the child theme. Then browse to “wp-content/themes/.” Enter the folder containing the currently active theme, taking note of the name of this folder as you do so.

2. Create a new folder on your computer's hard drive called “ChildThemeFiles,” then download all the files and folders from the theme folder in the FTP program to this folder.

3. Go to your “ChildThemeFiles” folder on your computer. Open “style.css” in a text editor. Start two new lines at the top of the file, then paste in the following code:

   /*
   Theme Name: Child Theme for Parent Theme
   Theme URI: http: //blogURL.com
   Description: Child theme for the *Name of parent theme*
   Author: Your name
   Author URI: http: //yourblogURL.com/
   Template: Exact name of parent theme here
   */

4. Change the general information in the code to the actual information for your website. In the “Template” entry, enter the name of the folder for the parent theme that you noted in step one. Save the file.

5. Return to your FTP program. Go up one level so you are back in “wp-content/themes/.” Upload your “ChildThemeFiles” folder to this location. Once you've done this, the child theme will become active and will be called by WordPress instead of the parent theme.

Tips & Warnings

• You must go through the whole process for every blog on your network. However, if each blog on the network uses the same theme, and it has the same folder name, you can simply upload the “ChildThemeFiles” folder to the "themes" folder of each blog using the FTP program.

References

• WordPress.com - Codex: Child Themes