I’ve just completed upgrades for both the Faith2012 and UU2011 WordPress themes. Both upgrades are minor — from version 2.1 to 2.2. (Details are below.)

• Download links and theme information are on the Faith 2012 home page.

Two Reasons for the Upgrade

1. WordPress recently released version 3.4. Two of the functions I used in 2.1 were deprecated with this release — add_custom_background and add_custom_image_header. I replaced both with the requisite add_theme_support.
2. I recently dug into Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin and I’m impressed. Despite my increasing aversion to plugins, I think congregations would be shrewd to use it. However, the way I’ve coded the title tag in these themes is not the way recommended for this plug-in. Out-of-the-box they butt heads with each other. If you do want to use Yoast’s SEO plugin, the easiest resolution of this code scuffle is to go into the header.php file of the version 2.2 theme, uncomment line 19 by deleting the “//” at the start of the line and then either delete or comment out lines 12 to 16.

How to Upgrade Your Theme

1. Back everything up. In particular, be sure to backup (a) the database and (b) the files in /wp-content/uploads/.
2. Download the current (2.2) theme version.
3. Copy it over to your /wp-content/themes/ folder — overwriting earlier version files if you have them.
4. FTP (or better yet SFTP) the new files to the server.
5. Double check your live WordPress site to be sure everything is okay.

Upgrade Details

For those wanting more detail, here are the files that have changed.

• style.css: updated the version number.
• functions.css: replaced add_custom_background with add_theme_support( ‘custom-background’, $args ) and add_custom_image_header with add_theme_support( ‘custom-header’, $args ).
• sidebar-page.php: added a default header to start the list.
• header.php: a first foray into supporting Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.
• searchform.php: updated the form parameters.

It’s not a critical update — more of an enhancement. Feel free to upgrade if you wish.

Download links and theme information (on the Faith 2012 home page).