This is an annoying little problem plaguing many WordPress themes: blank lines in the themes’ functions.php cause various random issues. The most common manifestation of this condition is the failure to save the “image” custom field. Below are a few commands to apply a quick fix. Unfortunately, these steps would need to be repeated every time you upgrade your theme, until the developers catch on. To simplify this task, I arranged the commands into a little script that will create a backup of your original functions.php and make the necessary changes.

The manual process is as follows: create a backups directory in your theme’s folder; backup the original functions.php; verify the backup; check functions.php for presence of blank lines; create a new functions.php without blank lines; copy the new file over the old one.

user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# mkdir backups
user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# cp -p functions.php ./backups/functions.php_`date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S'`
user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# ls ./backups
./  ../  functions.php_2012-10-16_203706

user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# grep -v . functions.php | wc -l
36

user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# cp -p functions.php functions.php_new
user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# grep . functions.php > functions.php_new
user@server.com [~/themes/arthemia-premium]# mv functions.php_new functions.php

#!/bin/bash

# Change the path below to reflect the actual location of your active WP theme
theme_folder="/data/htdocs/krazyworks.com/wp-content/themes/arthemia-premium"
if [ ! -d "${theme_folder}" ] ; then echo "Folder ${theme_folder} not found. Exiting... ; exit 1 ; fi
mkdir "${theme_folder}/backups"
/bin/cp -pf functions.php "${theme_folder}/backups/functions.php_`date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S'`"
ls -als "${theme_folder}/backups"
/bin/cp -pf "${theme_folder}/functions.php" "${theme_folder}/functions.php_new"
grep . "${theme_folder}/functions.php" > "${theme_folder}/functions.php_new"
/bin/mv -f "${theme_folder}/functions.php_new" "${theme_folder}/functions.php"
echo "All done"