Prudence 2018 was a theme released in January 2018 as a part of Aurora Update 11. Similar to Hale 2015, Prudence 2018 adapted the Prudence design and kept the powerful features of Sherman. A child of the Cornerstone theme, Prudence 2018 will continue to benefit from all new features added to Aurora for years to come.
Guides-Sites-and-Themes
Prudence 2018
Migrating From Other WordPress Servers
Cornerstone
Cornerstone is not a theme that is generally available to Aurora users. Rather, it was designed to be a starting point or a parent theme for all future themes produced by the UITS Web Development Lab. It is also made available to registered Aurora developers. This page is meant to help those developers in using Cornerstone for their own projects.
Creating Your Own Theme
Cornerstone is a bare-bones theme created to be developed upon. It is possible to create your own theme built upon cornerstones structure. We welcome you to play with the sources files.
Cornerstone Child Theme Starter Kit
The Cornerstone Child Theme Starter Kit is available to help developers get a new project running quickly. You can access it on GitHub.
Child Theming with SASS
Understanding SASS
The SASS variables available to you come from three possible documents. Cornerstone registers a large number of new variables mostly pertaining to navigation and widgets.
This is the pre-compiled Bootstrap scss in the global directory, and it has hundreds of variables.
Cornerstone registers a large number of new variables, mostly pertaining to navigation and widgets.
Sherman, a child theme built with SASS, can redefine any of the variable in Bootstrap or Cornerstone before they are compiled. Rather than wrestling with a dizzying number of selectors and tracking down every single place a single color or font may be referenced, you can edit a few variables and be 80% complete with your redesign. It’s fantastic!
Using a Compiler
In order to make changes, you will have to edit style.scss using the SASS variables. You will also need a SASS compiler. A common one is PREPROS.
Editing variables.scss
Once you have a general understanding of the variables and the file structure you can start editing variables.scss. This file contains listed default variables from both Bootstrap and Cornerstone. A change is simple: search for your target tag and change the attribute to whatever you would like it to be.
Example
To change the default link color for the navigation bar you would have to scroll down to the “$navbar” variables and make the changes you would like.
Editing style.scss
In order to edit the style of your theme you will need to edit it using SASS in style.scss. Variables do not go in style.scss.
Example
Below is an example of how you can change the style of your theme’s master header.
Child Theming with CSS
Cornerstone was built with SASS, but you can still develop with normal CSS.
Don’t use @import in your CSS file, or your site will break in IE8.
Instead, add this to your functions.php file:
<?php
function link_parent_theme_style() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'parent-style', get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_uri() );
}
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'link_parent_theme_style');
?>
Typically, a child theme will @import the css of the parent theme. Bootstrap 3, the framework which Cornerstone is based on, offers very limited support for Internet Explorer 8. By default, a Bootstrap 3 site in IE8 will render the mobile view. One column of content, and the collapse mobile navigation.
Being that IE8 accounts for a sizable (~7%) of traffic on Aurora, Cornerstone makes use of respond.js, which uses javascript to mimic media queries for IE8. However, respond.js will not work on anything loaded via @import. So this alternate method is required.
Child Themes
Child themes are a way to take an existing theme, such as Sherman, and change a couple of things about it. For developers looking to create something custom, we highly recommend looking into child themes first.
Resources
Hale 2015
Hale 2015 was a theme released in August 2015 as a part of Aurora Update 9. The bold blue Sherman theme was released in the summer of 2014, and its advanced features and customization options proved very popular. However, a number of customers requested a theme with all the functionality of Sherman but with the softer tones of the original Hale theme that was released in 2013. Hale 2015 addresses this issue, adapting the popular Hale design and keeping the powerful features of Sherman. A child of the Cornerstone theme, Hale 2015 will continue to benefit from all new features added to Aurora for years to come.
Sherman
Sherman is a child theme of Cornerstone, and utilizes SASS to be as lightweight as possible. Its design is bold, yet clearly a product of the university. It is named after Roger Sherman, Connecticut’s representative to the Continental Congress, and one of the Founding Fathers.