How to make WP admin recognize a newly created child theme?

Question

I am having a problem that's very similar to the one described here, except that the solution that worked for him (text encoding) didn't work for me.

I even tried applying unix2dos -o style.css from the command line (which definitely changed the file from LF to CRLF, as I could see that the file increased slightly in size), but that didn't help.

I also tried clicking the button Search Installed Themes but that didn't help either.

What are the requirements for making a child theme appear in the admin's list of Available Themes?

Answer 1

Found the cause of the problem - and fixed it!

It turns out that LF vs. CRLF is not an issue at all on a LAMP based webhost.

The problem in my particular case was that I copied the original theme's style.css verbatim, and it was missing a very critical line in the comment section:

Template: twentyeleven

Once I fixed that everything started working as expected.

Note: Template should point at the parent's directory, not the child's one.