How to Create a Child Theme in WordPress?

How to Create a Child Theme in WordPress?

If you’ve been a theme developer for any length of time, you will know how important it is to use a child theme when building upon an existing theme. WordPress themes can be amazing but there are so many examples of little things we all want to change. A color here, a font size there, perhaps use a different call to action on the buttons? Child themes solve this by allowing you to use all of the functionality of your chosen theme while allowing you to update it without the fear of losing your modifications.

The WordPress platform is a magnet for those who want to take matters into their own hands, who want complete control over their websites and want to be independent in running them. WordPress does make it really easily to completely customize a website. If you have a bit of knowledge of HTMl, CSS and/or PHP, there is nothing you can’t change.

What is a Child Theme?

Child Themes are themes which inherit and override the styles and templates of their parents. Just as in life, without parents, there are no children. In WordPress, Child Themes cannot exist without parent themes. A parent theme is any theme that is created as a stand alone theme. Every single default theme that WordPress is shipped with (Twenty Fifteen, Twenty Fourteen, etc) are parent themes. They do not depend on any other theme in order to work and function.

A child theme, on the other hand, depends completely on it’s parent. For example, if you tried to activate a child theme on your site and you didn’t have the parent theme, you’d get an error and the theme wouldn’t activate at all. This is not true for parent themes.

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