Updating themes built using underscores

Question

I'm a starting out wordpress theme developer and am contemplating using the underscores starter theme.

The issue I seem to have in my head is that I will be building themes for intended for general public rather than clients, so I will need to come out with new theme updates and I also assume many people like to keep up to date with wordpress updates. Now I keep picturing a scenario where the theme can break depending on theme and WP version update variations which I definitely do not want to happen.

Many themes I've used have a parent and child theme to counter losing any styles and theme settings or broken themes. However, on the underscores site, they mention not using it as a parent theme.

What is the best way to approach building themes to be used by general public that don't break after simple updates ?

Should or shouldn't I use underscores ?

If yes to use underscores, should i work with it as a parent/child theme ?

In conclusion, I want to build nice themes that work well and don't have conflict, lost settings or break after theme/wp updates all the while using great tools such as underscores(or some other starter theme). Are there any veterans out there that may have some advice on how I should approach development ?

Will much appreciate all and any answers. Thanks !

Siegfried Grimbeek Siegfried Grimbeek · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-10T07:08:43

We use underscores for 90% of my Wordpress projects.

The great thing about underscores is that it has the bare minimum.

It is literally an open canvas for you to build on.

What this means is that you can build a theme which is largely independant and will not be affected by core Wordpress updates.

If you do encounter an error due to updates down the line, it would most likely be due to a depreciated function, which will be easy to fix and release a patch at a later stage.

No themes are excempt from this and as a theme developer, you will need to check Wordpress update notes, to see whether your theme will be affected.

No, do not work with a child theme, underscores is developed to morph into a theme and is not really a stand alone theme on it own.

I use underscores with sass and include the following in my build:

as generic reset.scsss,
Bootstrap.scss (grid system only),
Bourbon.io

Happy Building!

Updating themes built using underscores

1 Answers