Responsive Theme updates impact thousands of users, cause broken themes and child themes as core files are changed and hidden form access.
Hi folks, @allanmvm here to discuss the recent updates to the Responsive Theme and the many inquiries I am receiving from frustrated and confused users.
As most of us know, using a child theme is supposed to be a good thing, right? Some would argue but the concept makes sense, work on a copy instead of ruining the original,a common sense approach most can digest. Typically theme developers make updates to their themes to rectify security vulnerabilities and bug fixes that are needed to enhance or protect users f the theme. CyberChimps however is making changes that are impacting users in a negative way of late. In the last 6 months alone, the Responsive Theme has gone through major changes to core files and recently the main style css file was hidden from access in the themes dashboard theme editor. Even with a child theme, many discovered a broken site or blog after updating the parent theme. and new users are lost when trying to create a child theme with the latest versions. In another attempt to assist the many users contacting me about this issue, I have created a short but clear video that sheds some light on the matter. I show where the style css file has been moved to in the latest version, and I also show 2 additional methods of modifying the theme without even creating a child theme at all. My video tutorials on child themes for the earlier versions still apply if you are using older version 1.9.3 or earlier of which a lot of people are still using believe it or not, especially in other countries. Check out the short video here:
I hope this short tutorial helps diminish the headaches being felt by many users especially our Newbies (hang in there Newbie, help is on the way)
Visit MindVisionMedia.net to find out more and get help with other issues regarding WordPress Responsive Themes.
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Get your FREE copy of my "Responsive Theme Area Zone Map Guidebook". It shows where everything is in the theme, download it here: Responsive Theme Area Zone Map Guidebook
By Allan Whitney Owner/Administrator MindVisionMedia.net
After a year of being live, MindVisionMedia.net has provided over 8,800 hours of FREE Responsive WordPress Training
to a global community of WordPress beginners and intermediate users,
First-Time Web Designers and those just looking to modify their
WordPress Theme.
MVM has over 102,000 views on YouTube, over 1,000 subscribersand the numbers keep rising.
While honing in on the needs of aspiring web designers and WordPress
users, expansion is on the horizon and I hope to continue with my goal
of becoming a valued and trusted resource on the Internet for FREE
learning materials that empower those who seek to learn and due for
self.
The Internet offers a wealth of opportunity, and in a time when
there are no jobs and no guarantees, hats off to people who try to
create one for themselves. My efforts give me great satisfaction when I
hear back from my loyal subscribers, followers, students and clients.
Here's what some of them had to say:
Gustavo Berdugo March
5th, 2014 • WordPress Responsive All in one SEO Pack Plugin I just want
to say that your tutorials are the best I have found so far. Many
thanks for sharing your knowledge. 5 stars for you.
jm6532 Feb
27, 2014 • Responsive WordPress Child Themes Tutorial Part #2 Updated
Version Scary how good Allan is, I tell you I emailed Allan with an
issue I had with my website today and he fixed it. Sounds easy, and he
made it seem easy........ but I had been working on it for 3 days and he
worked with me on it for hours. The reason he has 16 thousand views is
because Allen is patient with people who he has helped. Once I put it in
his hands, he had it done in 2 mins.. Amazing, If you have a website to
have built, or issues with a wordpress site. Email him. I cannot give a
higher praise. Thanx Allan for getting me out of a Jam!!
Gabby Sabatini Feb
21, 2014 • WordPress Responsive Theme Basics 2014 Allan. Wow, my
friend, you are awesome and you're saving my *** bigtime. New to WordPress and I'm using the Responsive Pro Theme. Thanks for all the
information!
Lord Dream Feb
16, 2014 • WordPress Responsive Theme Transparent Pages I just wanted
to say thanks again for all your superb Responsive Theme tutorials
Allan, this rgba transparency is AWESOME! Thanks also for making the CSS
snippets available to your members :-) Safe journeys,
Ptah Thothmes September
5th, 2013 • Wow Thanks ...Great stuff, I can jump right in now rather
than hunting, guessing & the always popular trial-by-error...
appreciate your direct manner, clear explanations, and anticipation of
optional edits we may wish to make directly in the code... like test
size...
Dr. Joe Hair August 18th, 2013 • Allan, I want to publicly thank you for your help. I
was becoming extremely frustrated over an issue with WP, widgets, and
plugins. I watched several of your videos and several of another's
videos on Responsive themes. After I had attempted everything I had seen
on both of your sets of videos to no avail, I tried a "Hail Mary" I
sent several emails to both you and this other individual. He referred
me to the WP forum, which did not help at all. On the other hand, you
personally answered EACH of my emails, and when you saw that I had
attempted everything correctly already, you offered to look at my site
and fix it for me. THANK YOU for taking the time to help someone you
don't even know. There were no sarcastic or snarky comments, just open,
honest caring from one individual to another. Words cannot express the
debt of gratitude I have for you. It is nice to meet someone who is
truly all about helping his fellow man. Thank you, again, Joe Hair
Join these folks and many others in
appreciation for the wealth of information, step-by-step guides, video
tutorials and more provided by Allan at MindVisionMedia.net. Help
support me and spread the word about my mission. If you need
Dynamic Responsive WordPress site design, child theme creation (even
after you've modified the parent theme), child theme modification,
graphics, ads, banners, flash animations or any other aspect of web
design, contact me for a free quote and analysis of your project. I'm sure I can beat the other guys prices.
Or you can always just buy me lunch too :-D
By Allan WhitneyOwner/AdministratorMindVisionMedia.net
WordPress has established itself as the most popular CMS available today!
Used by fortune 500 companies, celebrities, municipalities, major news
organizations and the little guy or gal, it offers robust features,
versatility and social media integration. But it has it's
vulnerabilities also and one must be diligent to prevent WordPress from
becoming a hackers dream.
When it comes to comments, unless you are running a Blog and are willing to moderate and manage the numerous comments and maintain a good level of security against
comment spam, you'll want to disable comments on your pages and posts.
This is accomplished easily by going to the Discussion settings under
the Dashboard label of Settings, and de-selecting the first 3 check
boxes. Typically this works pretty good, but you may not be done! If
you do this after the fact, there could be pages and posts in your site
or Blog that may have already been created that have comments enabled.
This setting located in each individual page or post as you create it,
overrides the settings under the Discussion menu. To see this option as
create a new page pr post, click on the screen options tab at the top
of the page or post editor and check the box for "Discussion". This will
show options at the bottom of your posts to either allow Comments or not. You can now make sure that comments are turned off for that particular post. There
is a quick way to do this, especially if you have a lot of pages. Click
on "Pages" in your Dashboard, this will bring up a list of all of your
pages (the same applies to posts), click the top check box above the
list next to the word Title to select all, click the bulk actions box
and choose Edit from the drop down, then click apply.
A new window will
open allowing you to select options for the entire page list you
selected at once. Disable comment, and Trackbacks and Pingbacks if
desired and save your settings. you just disabled comments on all pages
you selected with one click.
Go
to the next page, select all again and do the same thing until you have
disabled all comments on all pages and posts in your list. Now you have
absolutely turned off comments and no individual page will override the
main settings.
Looking good so far, but wait there's more! Few people
know or notice, that WordPress, by default enables comments on all of
your Media files you upload to WordPress. Thats right, after all we've
done so far to disable them, there isstill a "Back Door" vulnerability
in WordPress to receive comments.
Unfortunately, there is no bulk actions option when dealing with media files.
Why they didn't put this ability or option in the newest version I'll
never know. But you will have to manually edit each media file to turn
off comments. A tedious task if you have a lot of images. I recently
discovered this back door vulnerability and experienced some comment
spam on my site.
Now I have truly disabled ALL comments on my site for
pages, posts and media files and the comments have finally stopped. Of
course there are some plugins out there to help but I wanted to make
sure they were all turned off myself.
Be aware that when you
create a new page (or post) or add new media files, you'll have to
double check to make sure there are no options set to allow comments. There are ways to edit the core files and turn them off from the core,
but that is an extreme measure if you are not sure you won't want
comments at a future date. I didn't have to go that route and I am
happy with the results from doing it the way I described above.
WordPress will never be free of hackers, spammers and the like,
so again, if you don't want to deal with comments because you are just
too busy (like me) or you are not running a blog or discussion site, use
the methods described to put a stop to it, once and for all, but with
the option of turning them back on if you desire later on.
By Allan Whitney Owner/Administrator MindVisionMedia.net
If
you do this after the fact, there could be pages and posts in your site
or Blog that may have already been created that have comments enabled.
This setting located in each individual page or post as you create it,
overrides the settings under the Discussion menu. 