Hey Roger,

It looks like you’re doing everything OK, and I don’t think there is a bug here as I’ve been playing around with child themes recently, but I will test locally when I get a chance later this evening.

In the meantime, can you just clarify if you are selecting a parent overlay, or are you trying to enable a custom one? If so please take a look at this post to save me typing it all out again! There is a fix in the works currently.

I’m not trying to use a custom one. I just want to pick the silver one from the parent.

but you said child theme…  you have to physically create a child theme… and that thread is explicitly about you creating a custom child theme…

do you simply want to select the silver overlay from the default parent??  you dont have to touch any files to do that…  forum – themes – theme list… for default, you see an overlay dropdown…  pick the silver overlay..

perhaps we are just confusing terms???

if you create a child theme, you can still select an overlay from the parent…  but the child theme must be created and defined properly…

Yes, I want to create a child theme and then choose one of the parent overlays in that child theme. When I said “custom one”, I meant I’m not trying to create a new overlay – I just want to use one of the ones from the parent inside my child theme.

I tried again using the new reboot theme and got the same results. I’m probably creating the child theme wrong. Here’s what I did:

• Created directory ‘reboot child’ at wp-content/sp-resources/forum-themes
• Copied the following files from the reboot theme: spTheme.txt, spTheme.png, styles/reboot.php.
• Edited spTheme.txt to look like this:

Simple:Press Theme Title: Reboot child
Parent: Reboot
Version: 1.0
Theme URI: https://simple-press.com
Description: A Simple:Press cross-device/responsive based theme featuring traditional forum layout with numerous colour layout options
Author: Ike Staines, Andy Staines & Steve Klasen
Author URI: https://simple-press.com
Stylesheet: reboot.php
Screenshot: spTheme.png
Simple:Press Versions: 5.5.4 and above
Status: Beta

• On the available themes page, I clicked Activate theme next to the theme ‘Reboot child 1.0’. When I do this, the screen goes blank. Using the F12 tools I see the server responded with this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery(“#sfmsgspot”).fadeIn(“fast”);
jQuery(“#sfmsgspot”).html(“Theme activated/updated”);
jQuery(“#sfmsgspot”).fadeOut(8000);
window.location = ‘http://dev.galleryserverpro.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=simple-press/admin/panel-themes/spa-themes.php’;
});
</script>

• Despite the error, if I navigate back to the themes page, I see the reboot child theme is now active. Good. But I want to use the light-matte overlay, so I choose that and click Update Overlay. The screen again goes blank and using F12 I see the same script is returned as before. However, this time the changes are not persisted and I am stuck with the default blue overlay.

I’m guessing I’m missing one or more required files in the child theme. Do I need to copy the overlay files to the child, even if I don’t want to customize them?

FWIW, I’m creating a child theme as the first step for some future customizations, but in this thread I’m just starting and all I want to do is essentially copy the reboot theme to give myself a starting point.

This all works fine for me in testing. I think there might be two things I would suggest you try… we are still getting to grips with all the wrinkles in child themes ourselves!

Firstly – do not leave a space in the name of your child theme. If nothing else hyphenate it. And remember to update that in the txt file as well!

More importantly I do not believe that it is probably necessary for your child theme to have it’s own stylesheet even of there is nothing in it. So create an empty stylesheet in the /styles with it;w own name and again – change that in the txt file.

And see what happens!

That did it! I renamed the directory to rebootchild (no spaces) and then it started working. Thanks!

Ah good. I am not an expert but as I understand it Linux (Unix) doesn’t get on with spaces in filenames. Glad you are all set.