I just started using Pinegrow to edit a theme that I have bought from Envato Market. The Theme is not exactly what I wanted regarding the CSS and structure, so I wanted to give it a try with Pinegrow. Sadly I can only find tutorials of how to create a wordpress theme from scratch and upload it.
If you want to have a look, this is my site so far www.s3r.co/wp
I downloaded the whole folder with all template files from my server, and opened it as project inside of Pinegrow. It shows me a lot of text but not any preview of the page. index.php is empty and shows me that:
Basically this all looks kinda weird and I dont really know where to go, or whether I can really preview my content in Pinegrow? All the php pages look like that…
And I cannot find the index.html file anywhere. Do i need to download it from my page as preview? Or what do I have to do to edit my Theme in Pinegrow? This was the actual reason I bought the program…
Hi @phyjo. Unfortunately I think you’ve misunderstood the Wordpress abilities of Pinegrow. It can be used to convert HTML pages to Wordpress but doesn’t allow you to directly edit php files. What you could do is open the url for the site in Pinegrow and then create a child theme with the required changes.
Can you elaborate further? I have the same question. The Pinegrow documentation and tutorials explain how one can generate a WordPress theme from an HTML page using the Pinegrow for WordPress application version and further reveals how to customize the theme. So, it “speaks WordPress” with its theme-creation capabilities. As for directly editing PHP files, I saw numerous Pinegrow tutorials showing how Pinegrow reveals PHP code in code snippet windows and full-sized code windows, and those tutorials depict developers making code changes (e.g., Code Example).
If Pinegrow for WP only can ingest HTML and generate a WordPress theme with its builtin Theme Converter capability, then how do I create a child theme? With WordPress a child theme inherits its parent theme’s “infrastructure” (HTML, CSS stylesheet(s), PHP code). I seem to be missing a key point on how Pinegrow can retain the theme’s structure, allow one to effect WP theme-specific modifications and then generate a child theme.
You cannot import/edit WordPress themes (PHP files) directly with Pinegrow WP.
With Pinegrow, you can create, edit, update WordPress themes from HTML documents/templates on which you add specific WordPress actions and which are automatically converted/exported to guidelines compliant themes.
As for Child themes support, this is not a feature available in Pinegrow.
Creating and maintaining themes with Pinegrow is unlike any other method.
The following is a personal opinion: Having used child themes in the past (when I was creating themes with the Genesis framework), I can tell you that the ability to start a new project simply by forking the master of your main theme created with Pinegrow rather than having to depend on an existing parent theme on which you’ll have to customize CSS and tweak specific versions of the templates for each of your projects offers an extraordinary comfort of work as well as unparalleled possibilities.
Each theme is unique and does not depend on the particularities and needs of a parent theme etc…
As far as I’m concerned, the concept of child theme is a concept that has no particular use if your job is to create themes for your customers using Pinegrow
Now, if you want to offer your customers the possibility to use a child theme of your main theme, there are many ways to create a child theme from your WordPress theme created with Pinegrow.
