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Child Theme Check

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Child Theme Check

by Torsten Landsiedel

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Description

Child Themes are used to avoid overwriting your customizations. But if you preserve a file in a child theme, then you maybe preserve a security risk. After an update from the parent theme you always should check the changes and maybe add them to your child theme. This plugin helps you keeping track of these changes in the parent theme.

For full usage of the plugin your parent theme has to define the version of the template file in the header of the PHP file with an additional @version info.

For example: @version 1.0.0

If this is the case you will see a warning if the version of the parent theme file is higher than your child theme file. And you can see the differences between the parent theme file and the child theme file per wp_text_diff()-function like in revisions.

Some posts about this plugin:

These themes from Elmastudio are already using the @version info in the header:

  • Uku
  • Uku Light
  • Weta
  • Pukeko
  • Zeitreise
  • Werkstatt
  • Neubau
  • Hawea

Please spread the word and if you are a theme developer, please add this to your themes too! Thanks 🙂

  1. Upload the zip file from this plugin on your plugins page or search for Child Theme Check and install it directly from the repository
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Activate a child theme and run the child theme check from your tools menu
  1. Status View

    Status View

  2. Diff View

    Diff View

I just get the error: Parent theme is missing version keyword.

For full usage of the plugin your parent theme has to define the version of the template file in the header of the PHP file with an additional @version info.

For example: @version 1.0.0

If this is the case you will see a warning if the version of the parent theme file is higher than your child theme file. And you can see the differences between the parent theme file and the child theme file per wp_text_diff()-function like in revisions.

Diff is Legit

By exius on July 2, 2020

Diff works as advertised. It highlights changes to lines of code inside my child-theme files as compared to the parent theme files. Since I'm using a premium theme, I don't have control over how the theme is written, so the @version detection feature will doubtfully be useful in this case since the parent theme isn't using that on top of all their pages. They are however using the @since tag for almost every function. That seems complicated to track. Diff is already highlighting the differences between lines of code, so @since might not be too useful either.

Great tool

By John (dsl225) on September 13, 2016

Very useful and works just fine. Many thanks for your work!

Very helpful

By Sven Wagener (mahype) on September 3, 2016

This tool have been really helpful for me. Thanks a lot!

Great tool

By Li-An on September 3, 2016

I was bored to verify if my child themes were up to date and this plugin is a great tool to see in a glimps if you have to rework your child theme.

Does what it is supposed to

By websupporter on September 3, 2016

Thank you Thorsten et.al for this very useful plugin. I think it's a fantastic idea to check for a version header and this plugin is a good reminder of developing with a useful standard.

Wow! great tool

By dimitris33 on September 3, 2016

Just found it, great tool, thanks for sharing

Great time saving plugin

By Alex H. (hamburg-trip) on September 3, 2016

Clear and fast overview about your changes with comparison view. I hope more theme developer would use to record the version in the files.

Perfect

By CMG (seraphyn) on September 3, 2016

Works flawlessy and gives after every Update of the Mothertheme the overview I need to fix some code.
Thanks for a good portion of security.

1.0.9

  • Tested with WordPress 6.6

1.0.8

  • Upublished because of problems with SVN

1.0.7

  • Tested with WordPress 6.5

1.0.6

  • Fix CSS

1.0.5

  • Fix broken layout in WordPress 5.7 (Thanks to Torsten Bulk for the report)
  • Fix PHP warning
  • Tested up to 5.7

1.0.4

  • not released

1.0.3

  • Fix flashing of first diff view
  • More i18n improvements (Thanks @pedromendonca)
  • Tested up to 5.4

1.0.2

  • fixed some WordPress coding standards issues
  • added Github Updater Metadata
  • updated readme.txt
  • i18n improvements (Thanks @pedromendonca)
  • Tested up to 5.3

1.0.1

  • Fixed typo in German translation (Thanks @pixolin)
  • Changed text for action link on plugins page (Thanks @presskopp)
  • Tested up to 4.6.1

1.0.0

  • Initial release
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