Fail to copy a child theme to developer account

[ngcvm]

Hi everyone,

The context is I have a child theme which is inherited from a theme I bought in the marketplace. The problem is I cannot copy this child theme to my developer account since I want to do some experiments in my sandbox space before publishing it, but the copy process failed.
My question is how can I copy this child theme or the theme that I purchased in marketplace to my dev account?

Thank you.

[Jaycee_Lewis]

Hey, @ngcvm 👋 Thanks for reaching out. To confirm, this is the expected behaviour.

“Theme folders in the @hubspot or @marketplace directories cannot be copied between accounts” and “You will not be able to copy purchased templates from one account to another” from this documentation — Copy a template or theme to another HubSpot account

Developer portals and their associated app test accounts are considered separate portals in this case. 

Thank you!  — Jaycee

[ngcvm]

Thanks for your answer, but is there an alternative solution for my problem?

[WilsonWong]

Is there an alternative we can turn to since this isn't available? Our main account uses a purchased marketplace theme as well and we want a development sandbox that has an identical environment to build against.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @WilsonWong and @ngcvm ,

Whether the original marketplace theme or a child theme, it is not possible to move the theme to a sandbox, or vice versa.

This seems to be a common question - wanting to build a site in a sandbox and move it to production, unfortunately, it is a limitation that comes with marketplace themes because otherwise, you could use CLI to move the theme around to multiple portals without having the proper license from the developer.

Ideally, you would stage your new site with the new child theme using Content Staging which would then allow you to publish and redirect your existing site in a single step.

There are some downsides to Content Staging, including limitations that remove the efficiencies that come with cloning in the regular page builder/editor. However, based on some other threads, it sounds like there may be changes to Content Staging in the works.

I know this isn't the answer you want to hear, but at least now you know for sure.

Best,
Jennifer