Ok, in the old days, you could have Atahualpa installed in separate folders (in my case, I had folders named "Atahualpa-jeans", Atahualpa-kitchen", "Atahualpa-books" etc) and customize each one to have a different look. Once you did that, using a plugin like GYS-Themed Categories, you could literally give a different look to your site, based on the category.

For instance, most of my posts had a blue-jean theme, but things under the category "from-the-kitchen" (where I discussed recipes we'd tried) had a different look, while still using Atahualpa as the theme.

Am I to understand that is no longer possible without some serious coding? Is Atahualpa using the same tables, no matter what folder you install it in? Because I just upgraded my main site, and everything matched a previous upgrade made for a new category.

How did you customize those differently? What version of Atahualpa are you talking about? In the current version all the style setting are in the database so changing to a different instance of the theme should make no difference unless you modified the theme files themselves which is no recommended.

This was back in the 3.3.X days. You could customize just the way you're supposed to, using the "Atahualpa Theme Options" interface. But each instance had it's own references in the database, I guess, because it worked like a charm.

*sigh* I knew I didn't want to upgrade, but the new version was so nice to use, I couldn't resist upgrading not one but two of my instances, and ruined everything in the process.

Thanks for replying so fast, had I known I'd have stuck around, maybe we could have found a solution last night.

Um... never mind. I just looked in the database, and realized I had made some small modifications, giving key elements a different name (bafjeans_ata_.. for instance, instead of bfa_ata_...)

Maybe all isn't lost yet!

note as of 3.4.7 all the theme options are stored in one db row named 'bfa_ata4'

So I discovered: another sub-theme (so to speak) is also messed up because it was a 3.4 version. *sigh* I'm so screwed!

Ummm... is that a clue? I think it might be! thanks!