Over the years, WordPress has gone from being a simple blogging tool to a user-friendly Content Management System (CMS). These days, it’s pretty hard to imagine the internet without it. Thanks to the tool’s popularity, many WordPress pros now specialize in creating WordPress themes as templates for websites.
These themes provide almost all the features that site owners are looking for and thanks to the huge number of choices out there almost everybody will find a design that they like. However, for a site to truly reflect a company’s corporate design, small tweaks usually still have to be made, for example, to the code or the structure. But what happens to these changes when the theme gets updated? Well, that’s where WordPress child themes come in handy.
To make sure that you don’t lose your changes when your website theme is updated, it’s a good idea to create a WordPress child theme. A child theme inherits its appearance and functions from a main theme, which is known as – you guessed it – the parent theme. The two are linked. When you make changes in a WordPress child theme, they automatically override the relevant parts of the parent theme, but do not actually overwrite it. This means you can safely update the parent theme without losing any of your customizations.
While you’re making major changes or running updates, error messages may be displayed on your website. So that you don’t annoy your visitors, it’s best to enable the WordPress maintenance mode.
WordPress child themes can have a number of different components. The important thing is to know which files to make your changes in. There are some files that all WordPress child themes need in order to work correctly. These are:
Let’s look at why a WordPress child theme needs these three files.
A WordPress child theme will only work if you’ve created the three files listed above. The purposes of these files are as follows:
If you only want to make tiny changes to a theme, you might prefer a simpler solution, such as the Simple Custom CSS plugin or the built-in Customizer tool (WordPress version 4.7 and later).
Using a WordPress child theme has lots of advantages. Nonetheless, there are a few disadvantages too, and it’s important to be aware of these so you can decide whether it’s worth creating a child theme. This is all the more true if you only want to make a few minor changes.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Changes are not overwritten when the parent theme is updated | Updating the original template only fixes security vulnerabilities in the templates files in the parent theme folder. The vulnerabilities will therefore still be present in the template files in the WordPress child theme folder. |
| A WordPress child theme offers more flexibility than the built-in options in the WordPress backend. For example, you can customize the layout and structure of your site and add extra functions to your theme. | You may see an impact on performance, because the browser has to load two style sheets. |
| When you make extensive changes to the CSS, these are visible in the style.css file (unlike with the built-in WordPress customizer). | |
| WordPress child themes are ideal for beginners who want to learn more about WordPress, because if things go wrong, they can easily go back to the parent theme. | |
| Using a WordPress child theme can help you develop your site faster. |
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Highly secureShared accessAvailable anywhereNow that we’ve seen why WordPress child themes are useful, let’s look at how to go about creating one.
Using an FTP client such as FileZilla, log in to your server and locate the following folder in your WordPress installation:
your-wordpress-installation-path/wp-content/themes/In the themes folder, create a sub-folder for your WordPress child theme. It’s best to give the folder the same name as the parent theme, but with “-child” added to the end.
Create a style.css file and use a text editor to add the following information to the header:
/*
Theme Name: [Name of parent theme] Child
Theme URI: [http://example.com/parent-theme-child/]
Description: [Name of parent theme] Child Theme
Author: [Your name]
Author URI: [URL of your website]
Template: [Name of the parent theme folder]
Version: 1.0.0
Text Domain: [Name of the parent theme]-child
*/In the example above, the parts in square brackets indicate places where you need to enter your own values. You don’t necessarily have to include all of these lines. The ones the WordPress child theme actually requires to work properly are:
Once you’ve created the file and entered the necessary information, upload it to the WordPress child theme folder via FTP.
In the ideal scenario, your parent theme will already contain an instruction for loading the style sheet of your WordPress child theme. However, not all themes do this. You, therefore, need to check how the parent theme is set up. There are three possibilities:
Here’s what the code will look like in the second of the scenarios listed above:
<!--?php</codesnippet-->
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_theme_enqueue_styles' );
function my_theme_enqueue_styles() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_uri(),
array( 'Name of parent theme style sheets'),
wp_get_theme()->get('Version') // This will only work if your header contains the Version line
);
}
?>If the WordPress child theme needs to load both style sheets via function.php, the code will be as follows:
<!--?php</codesnippet-->
function child_theme_styles() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'Name of parent theme style sheets', get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css');
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-theme-css', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() .'/style.css' , array('Handle name of parent theme style sheets'));
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'child_theme_styles' );
?>Put the function.php file with the style.css file in the WordPress child theme folder.
You can also add a third file, called screenshot.png, to the WordPress child theme folder. WordPress will show this image in the themes section of the backend to make it easier for you to identify your theme.
Once you’ve created your WordPress child theme, you need to activate it in the backend just as you would with any other theme. To do this, log in and locate your child theme under “Appearance” > “Themes”.
If you’ve already made changes to the parent theme using the WordPress Customizer, these will be lost when you activate your WordPress child theme. However, using the Customizer Export/Import plugin you can export your Customizer settings and then import them again once you’re ready.
Congratulations! Your WordPress child theme is now ready to use. If you want to make changes to another templates file, first copy the file from the parent theme folder and paste it in your child theme folder. The path must match that of the parent theme. The modified file in the WordPress child theme folder will automatically override the file in the parent theme.
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