Any changes to the core theme should be made using git:
git clone https://github.com/essl-pvac/uol-wordpress-theme.git
If you need to have write access to this repository, please contact Peter Edwards p.l.edwards@leeds.ac.uk, otherwise, create a fork in Github and issue pull requests if you want your code incorporating into the codebase.
Making changes to CSS in the theme
Changes should not be made to the CSS files in the theme directly – both uol.css and uol.min.css are compiled from LESS files (http://lesscss.org/). I you do decide to edit the CSS files in the theme, using LESS to do so would be much easier and less prone to errors.
If you want to change some styles in the theme, there are plugins which will allow you to add CSS to a site which can override the core CSS in the theme (these styles are added after the main theme CSS files). One plugin which does this is called Slim Jetpack (https://wordpress.org/plugins/slimjetpack/), a collection of plugins which contans a CSS editor module.
If you decide to use this plugin, it would probably be wise to examine the styles applied to the elements you want to change using a developer tool in your browser – this will show you how the element is targeted by the CSS and show you what you have to do to override the styles. For example, if you want to change the heading font family, you need to target headings using the following:
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
font-face:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
}
But if you want to change the font style in the right hand sidebar menu, you will need to target the element like this:
.site-sidebar ul.menu li a {
font-face:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
}
The more specific you are in targeting elements on the page, the more likely it is that your styles will override those in the theme (unless, of course, you make them !IMPORTANT).
Please note that making changes of this sort can contravene the web toolkit guidelines.
Making a Child Theme
The theme contains an example of a WordPress Child theme (in the child_theme directory) which can be used to override any part of the main theme, including the theme templates, CSS and Javascript.
If you would like to make a Child theme and use it on this hosting service, please contact Peter Edwards p.l.edwards@leeds.ac.uk.