Increase font size

[Millielil]

Hi
I am very new at this.
Love my encounters theme though I would like to increase the size of the font on the overall site. How do I do this? I haven’t been able to figure this out…

Thanks, Millielil

[Sushil Adhikari]

I didn’t make my previous themes easy enough for font management as it can get a little complicated. But I recommend using a font plugin to do that, or if you are using a plugin to edit CSS, or if you are using a child theme, you would modify the body base font size, something like this:

body {font-size: 110%;}

…or whatever size you want.

[Millielil]

I am not using a child theme, just the normal pro version.

Do you know of any font plugins that are pretty easy?
Using a plugin to edit css makes no sense to me, sorry 🙂

[Sushil Adhikari]

If you are using jetpack, it has a CSS editor, but I’ve personally never used any, but perhaps this one might help?
http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-custom-css/screenshots/

You may also want to consider using the child theme that comes with this theme…there’s a tutorial for it as well, plus you can read more about using child themes here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

For actual font plugins that lets you choose fonts, sizes, and more, you may want to check out this one as it appears it’s a very popular one:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-fonts/

[Millielil]

If I install the child theme what happens to all the stuff I set up in the normal theme? Widgets etc. Do I have to do it all over?

I wanna make sure I understand this correctly, so if I use the normal edit functions in the parent theme (and just stick to the fonts as they are), this will stay when the theme is updated but changes made otherwise will not unless I use th child theme?

[Sushil Adhikari]

unfortunately yes…. it’s a WordPress thing, so whenever you activate any theme, parent or child, WordPress sees it as a “new” theme activation. It does not inherit or import theme option settings from a previous theme activation.

So if the child theme is not an option for you at this time, then you will want to try the Edit CSS plugin option, or if you use Jetpack, it has it’s own Edit CSS function. The important factor here is that any changes you make to the actual theme itself, you will lose those whenever there is an update to the theme and you would have to redo them again. Which is why if you use a child theme, or a CSS edit type plugin (or any other type of plugin), you won’t lose your modifications.

[Millielil]

I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but what do you mean when you say “make changes to the theme itself”?

I’m thinkning that since I don’t know what that means I’m probably not doing it… 😉

I want to avoid the child theme thing because I’m very new at this and it seems complicated, to me anyway…

But if I get the edit CSS plugin to change the font size a wee bit, will this disappear with the next update?

Thank you in advance 🙂

[Sushil Adhikari]

No worries… and no question is a dumb question. A rule of thumb when to use a child theme and not to use one:

1. If you plan to make any code changes to any theme file, either now or in the future, such as moving or changing code, then use a child theme
2. If you only need to make changes to styles, such as a font size, then a CSS editing plugin can be used.

To answer your last question….no, you will not have your font size changes disappear on the next update.

[Sarah McDowell]

I am also interested in increasing the font size for the overall body text of the Encounters theme. I wouldn’t want the heading sizes to change.

Is this all I need to change?: body {font-size: 110%;}

[Sushil Adhikari]

@Sarah …..For the most part, it should work, but try it…you could always remove the custom css if not, but I think it should do ok.

[Sarah McDowell]

I tried editing the child theme’s style.css file to increase the font size. It did not work for me. I shall try editing it in the actual theme’s style.css file.

[Sarah McDowell]

So I was wondering how I would go about increasing the overall font size of the website if adding
body {font-size: 110%;}
to the child theme’s style.css doesn’t do anything.

[Sushil Adhikari]

Just by coincidence, I am working on the newer Preference based theme and I will be using rem font sizes, which is what the Encounters theme uses. For rem sizes, the base font-size has to be on the HTML and not the body. As I just realized, it should be like this:

html {
font-size: 110%;
}

rem (Root em) means HTML and not the body.

[Sarah McDowell]

Great, it worked perfectly now!

[Millielil]

Hi Again

I decided to go ahead with the child theme, since the plugins are really awful for increasing font size…

Where do I put the piece of code you suggest?

Thanks 🙂

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