Solution dealing with Child Theme / Parent theme functions

Question

This week I was struggling a bit customizing an exsisting theme for a client. To prevent the theme from being overwritten each update I created a child theme. This allowed me to cusomize most of the files that handled templating. The function which loaded additional stylesheets and js libraries was pluggable and could be overwritten.

The biggest problem I faced was to overwrite some of the core functions of the theme. These were not pluggable (did not use the if(!function_exsisits()) statement) and didn't use a hook or filter. Calling the same core function from the child theme functions.php or a custom plugin threw a fatal error (function cannot be redeclared).

Answer 1

My solution to this issue was to create a custom plugin with copies of the core functions needed to be overwritten. I gave these functions custom names so I could call them from the template files in the Child Theme directory. Now I could add my own code and modifications and leave files with the core theme functions intact.

This creates some redundant code, but now I can use a child theme and 'overwrite' core theme functions until the theme author makes the original core functions pluggable.