YOOtheme Pro 1-Click Updates and easy customizations

It is time for our next milestone on the road to YOOtheme Pro. Today's blog post is about how we are improving customizations and updating themes without losing your modifications.

Warp has always supported customizations. So far, these have been spread across different files in the theme, keeping us from implementing automatic 1-click updates. YOOtheme Pro themes will save settings into the database and introduce child themes to completely separate the core theme and modifications.

Settings move to the database

The new website builder allows you to change almost any aspect of your theme. For example, it has settings for your custom CSS/LESS and JavaScript and lets you pick your site's logo or favicon. Instead of saving the settings to files, it stores them inside the database. This means that for most customizations, you won't have to change any files at all.

File customizations

Some changes require to be inside the file system and can't be stored in the database, for example when modifying one of the layout files. Child themes bypass this behavior by storing changes in a separate folder. Apart from making 1-click updates possible, child themes are an amazing way to keep your customizations outside the core structure. They can be a Git repository, independent of the parent theme, which is great to keep track of your modifications.

How do child themes work?

To overwrite a file, you simply duplicate parts of the parent theme. A file that is present in a child theme will automatically overwrite its counterpart. This approach is simple and powerful at the same time, as you can easily customize and even add new template files. For example, a child theme can add page layouts, a new style or additional CSS files.

1-click updates coming your way

With the settings that are now stored in the database and the introduction of child themes, customizations will be possible on a whole new level. At the same time, the theme itself will be updated without problems – with simple 1-click updates. Managing customized sites will be easier than ever before.

In our next post we will go more into the website builder - the heart of our new themes.