Title: Changing example child theme style.css breaks template
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Changing example child theme style.css breaks template

 *  [heidiweiland](https://wordpress.org/support/users/heidiweiland/)
 * (@heidiweiland)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/)
 * Hello there… This is really strange. I have been using WordPress and the theme
   Thematic for several months now and have never had a problem. I just resently
   set up another development site on my local drive and have been having an impossible
   time of activating a child theme based on Thematic. I move the example child 
   theme folder up from the themes/thematic/ folder and activate the child template
   in the WordPress interface just fine. Then, I open style.css, make a change, 
   undo the change and then save, which causes the template to break (showing the“
   Template is missing” message).
 * I’ve wasted several hours trying to get it to get this to work where, before,
   it was nearly automatic. Could this be a problem with the latest version of WP????
 * Thanks in advance for any insight.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284145)
 * Are you making your changes in the child theme’s stylesheet(s)?
 *  Thread Starter [heidiweiland](https://wordpress.org/support/users/heidiweiland/)
 * (@heidiweiland)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284187)
 * Originally, I was modifiying the style.css in the child template. After much 
   frustration, I’ve traced it back to this: Everything works, then I open style.
   css, make a change, undo it, save and, voila… “the template is missing”.
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284252)
 * I’m not having any problems using Thematic with a child theme locally here. However,
   I did notice some non-standard characters in the sample child theme’s style.css
   file which I immediately removed:
 * `Thematic is Â© Ian Stewart http://themeshaper.com/`
 * In theory, they shouldn’t affect anything as they’re inside a comment block but
   if they are still in your child theme, it might be worth removing that line and
   seeing if it has any effect.
 *  Thread Starter [heidiweiland](https://wordpress.org/support/users/heidiweiland/)
 * (@heidiweiland)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284541)
 * Thanks for the suggestion, esmi, but, unfortunately, it didn’t work. If I go 
   into the database and manually change the stylesheet, the correct template will
   be applied to the site. So far, that’s the only thing that’s worked. Could this
   be a problem with multiple installations of WP on one server? That sounds ridiculous
   to me but, then, so does this problem!
 * Heidi
 *  [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * (@esmi)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284542)
 * I’ve got 2 WP installs on my dev server and often have both running. Never seen
   this kind of problem.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Changing example child theme style.css breaks template’ is closed to 
new replies.

## Tags

 * [css not working](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/css-not-working/)

 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [esmi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/esmi/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-example-child-theme-stylecss-breaks-template/#post-1284542)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics
