Solving the “Template Is Missing” Error

Posted in Latest on Jul 31, 2007 | 14 comments

Apparently this is something new with the latest version of WordPress, but I have found that if you edit the theme’s stylesheet to remove the first line, like so:


/*
Template: blank-stare < remove this line!
Theme Name: Blank Stare
Description: Even more minimalist than Zen! Content only front page.
Author: Joni Mueller for Pixelita Designs LLC
Author URI: http://www.pixelita.com
*/

The error message goes away. Let me know if you encounter a theme where this fix does not work for you. And thanks, everyone, for downloading (or attempting to download!) our themes!

14 Responses to “Solving the “Template Is Missing” Error”

  1. David Stembridge says:
    December 2, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    I did get an older theme of yours to load using this (The Barn Ported to WP 2.1)
    but… it shows the current theme to be WordPress Default 1.6 by Michael Heilemann…
    any ideas?
    Thanks!!!

  2. David Stembridge says:
    December 2, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    The theme can be found here:
    http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/1549/the-barn-ported-to-wp-21/

  3. Dan says:
    December 11, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    not working on tech-bytes-reloaded which I wouldn’t mind so much, I would just uninstall it and go find a theme that works, except that now i can’t delete it either. getting a 550 error no such file, though clearly there is one. ughhhh.

  4. Bel says:
    February 10, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    The Miss Liberty theme does the same for me, says that the template is missing, I removed the first line like it says above but I still got the same error message.

  5. Hap says:
    August 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    I removed the line from Picnic, yet still get the template missing error.

  6. Ignacio says:
    December 16, 2008 at 8:19 am

    Solved! Thank you!

  7. Custom PHP says:
    January 6, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    I was getting the “Template Is Missing” message.

    According to the docs, version 2.7 requires only two files to create a theme. 1) style.css 2)index.php.

    I was having problems because I changed the name of index.php to index-saved.php.

    Now all is good and my WordPress education continues.

  8. Meg says:
    February 28, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    Thank you so much. I’ve banging my head against my desk for about half an hour over this.

  9. AP says:
    March 29, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Thanks dude, that fixed it.

  10. erica stjohn says:
    April 5, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Worked for me thanks!

  11. daily horoscope says:
    May 25, 2009 at 10:44 am

    I have older theme and I haven’t any problems.

  12. Gemma says:
    June 2, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Worked like a treat :) Thanks for posting this!!

  13. sudhi says:
    August 31, 2009 at 11:38 pm

    Works perfectly on wp 2.8.4 . thanks

  14. Sheena says:
    December 30, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    Hi,
    I’ve tried to do it your way. The stylesheet is as below. I deleted the fourth ‘template’ whole line, but after that, at the ‘manage themes’ page there doesn’t seem to be any mention of the Gallery theme, not even under the ‘Broken themes’ section.

    Stylesheet as below:

    Theme Name: Gallery, a Thematic child theme
    Theme URI: http://www.chris-wallace.com/2009/06/22/gallery-1-2-released/
    Description: The ultimate gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress.
    Template: thematic
    Author: Chris Wallace
    Author URI: http://chris-wallace.com
    Version: 1.2.1

    I really really appreciate any help because I’ve been searching for solutions for close to 2 hours over this & I can’t sleep.

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