Customization Within the Theme

The Theme offers you many options with which to customize your site.

• Customizing Appearance: See your options under Appearance > Customize on the administrative dashboard.
• Customizing Plugins: You are welcome to install plugins beyond what comes with the theme.
• Customizing Widgets: You are welcome to install widgets beyond what comes with the theme.
• Customizing menu, text, pages, forms, images.

You may need to customize the way the date and time appear in plugins and widgets, depending on whether they are using American or Canadian/European conventions. To change this in the Events plugin, choose Events > Settings from the administrative menu. At the top of the screen you’ll see four tabs: General, Pages, Formatting, and Emails. Choose Formatting and set the date and time preferences on the menu below.

Customization Beyond the Theme

Sometimes you want your site to do things that the Theme won’t permit. When you these substantial modifications to design or function you enter into a tricky, but navigable, territory. What you need to do is create a Child Theme – a Theme that’s a “child” of the “parent” UUA WordPress Theme for Congregations. Without a Child Theme, your modifications will be lost whenever you update the theme. (Updates to the Theme will be released periodically and are necessary for the continued functioning of your website.

When is a Child Theme called for?

• When you edit the UUA Theme’s code
• When you change the color scheme beyond the UUA Theme’s three options
• If you choose a different font
• If you modify the UUA Services Plugin to show two or more services rather than one

You do not need to create a Child Theme if you simply add other WordPress-compatible plugins and widgets.

How to Make a Child Theme

Here's more information about child themes. Learn how to create child themes on WordPress.org.