[support] Why SubTheme?

[Larry Garfield]

On Sunday, March 13, 2011 7:47:56 pm Fred Jones wrote:
> > These days, theme's are viewed much like contributed modules which code
> > you usually do not alter but rather override in other places. Personally,
> > I think themes are quite different from modules and that there's a good
> > chance that future ameliorations of a theme produce unexpected results on
> > your website but, nevertheless, this seems to be the current mainstream
> > thinking nowadays.
> 
> Yes, that's exactly what I feel. I was always nervous that I will make
> a subtheme and then in 2 months we will upgrade and then my client
> will call me on the phone frantic that I "broke" page X. He won't know
> that it's due to a CSS change in the new version of the theme.
> 
> Has anyone else experienced this? Or is it basically considered safe
> to use a subtheme and rely on the main theme author not to do
> something stupid?

At the risk of sounding seditious, there's no reason you *have* to upgrade a 
base theme after the site is built unless there's a security update.  In my 
experience security holes in the good/popular base themes are extremely rare, 
so if you want to build your site on a given release of Zen and then a new Zen 
release comes out you can most likely just ignore it.  

--Larry Garfield