I'm gonna be blunt and ignore polite speech here, because I've been screwing with my theme all day, frustrated that I can't solve some simple problems with my site. I am in a bad mood. I started using Atahualpa yesterday, and I have a serious gripe with it: no child theme support. Everyone keeps repeating the ideal that Atahualpa is "too good" for child themes, that they are unnecessary for several reasons. But I don't care.

I need my theme to have an ability for my members to switch specific styles. Nothing special, just a few colors and images-- and a emphasize that. Essentially, a really basic theme switcher. But apparently, since Atahualpa hates child themes, I have to figure out some special way to do it. What the heck.

So is there a way to allow my users to switch some colors and images with the click of a button, like a theme switcher plugin would allow, or do I have to get a new theme? Because that's what's gonna end up happening if I don't have some kind of solution. Can someone please help me?

The way Atahualpa is built functions well for many but will not meet everyone's needs. All the settings are in the database which makes some things easier but having multiple Atahualpa theme styles is not one of them.

Just like some people are happy with a sedan and others want a truck with a trailer. Neither is bad that just meet different needs.

I know there are some threads where some have adapted Atahualpa to WPMU and maybe there is some info in those threads to help you.

Child themes are a function of Wordpress itself. Any and every theme can have child themes, as long as it's running on a new enough version of WP.

I am using ATA with a child theme with no problem. There are very few scenarios where using a child theme with ATA makes sense. In my case, it's because I am using ATA on multiple sites in a WP multisite setup, and I have a custom template I only want available on one of them.

Can you please help me find some info on properly setting up a child theme in Atahualpa, then? I'm not brand new to messin' around with WordPress and themes, but I am new to making child themes. I've been reading about child themes all day but I still haven't gotten an Atahualpa child theme to work. Could someone please break it down for me?

Instructions on creating a child theme are here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes. Basically you just create a directory, put in a styles.css with the appropriate header plus any theme files you wish to override.

Generally in a child theme you can just update styles.css, and the new styles will get picked up. I'm not positive, but I don't think ATA loads the styles.css file at all, since the styles come from the database. If that's the case, ATA won't automatically pick up overrides you place in that file. So, you'd need to update ATA to bring in that file. (That's not the only way to make the changes I think you want, but it's probably simplest.) You'll need to add something like this to the head:

	<style type="text/css" media="screen">
		@import url( <?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?> );
	</style>

Pre 3.7 you could have put it in an insert in the theme options. Since version 3.7 can't handle php in inserts, I think you'll need to edit the header.php file and put it in directly. I would just put it in the main theme, though you could put an edited header.php in each of the child themes.

Alright, so I put that code in the parent Atahualpa's header.php? Where do I put it within the header.php file, and what is it doing? Is it making Atahualpa get information from, and use, the style.css from an activated child theme?