Creating a WordPress Child Theme is perhaps one phenomenon for which I adore WordPress. While maintaining my blog on blogger platform, I was never able to use a child theme kinda service on my website. Use of child theme in WordPress helps to customize your website with a ready made option of reverting back anytime if something goes wrong during the customization process. Use of active child theme also helps to preserve all customization and new update does not disturb the existing modifications. Remember whenever you update your site with a new version, your all previous customization vanishes and you have to redo once more. Use of child theme prevents a repetition of your customization task.
What is Child Theme?
Before we proceed to discuss about Creating a WordPress Child Theme, the concept of Child Theme should be ample clear in our minds. As the name denotes, When we talk of a child, there has to be a Parent. So the main theme can be called a parent theme, only when a child theme is built out of it. The child theme carries all the properties of the parent theme plus any modifications or customization, which are carried over it. In WordPress some frameworks e.g. Genesis frameworks by the StudioPress is ostensibly made to be customized only through Child Themes. One very important concept should be always very clear in your minds that a Child Theme always performs in conjunction with the Parent Theme. That means a child theme does not have its individual entity and it can not work on its own in absence of a parent theme.
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How to Create a WordPress Child Theme ?
Let us now concentrate upon the actual process of WordPress Child Theme creation. Child theme can be created by manual coding processes as well as by use of the plugins. I will recommend use of plugins, because they are easy to launch, safe and fast. However in the following paras I will be deliberating upon both the processes of Child Theme creation.
Creating a WordPress Child Theme by Manual Process
You should not be tense or preoccupied with the feeling that Creating a WordPress Child Theme in WordPress manually will be a tedious process. Well it’s NOT. It is perhaps just one of the easiest method to create a child theme. Just follow the following steps and you are done.
- Navigate to cPanel > File Manager > public_html > wp-content > themes.
- Create a folder with extension -child. For example since we have the parent theme named TwentySixteen, So we can name our child theme folder as TwentySixteen-child.
- Now click upon your newly created folder TwentySixteen-child to open it.
- At right hand side of the panel, within TwentySixteen-child folder, create two new text files and name them as style.css and functions.php.
- Now click on style.css to open it.
- Copy Paste the following header contents into it and save.
/*
Theme Name: Twenty Sixteen Child
Theme URI: https://wordpress.org/themes/twentysixteen-child/
Author: YourName
Description: Twenty Sixteen Child is a modernized take on an ever-popular WordPress layout created to help in Customization.
Version: 1.3
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
This theme, like WordPress, is licensed under the GPL.
Use it to make something cool, have fun, and share what you’ve learned with others.
*/
Thats All, Its all DONE.
Now to activate this theme, go to your wp-admin panel and navigate to Appearance > Themes.
- Click upon twentysixteen-child theme to open it.
- Click on Activate button to activate it.
Creating a WordPress Child Theme by Plugins
Though there are several plugins for Creating a Child Theme in WordPress but I will recommend Orbisius Child Theme Creator , because I have been using it quite comfortably for some times. To me it is a very convenient tool and easy to use.
- You can install the above plugin and activate it.
- For Creating a WordPress Child Theme navigate to Appearance > Orbisius Child Theme creator.
- After creation of the child theme and its activation you can use editor for customization by navigating to Appearance > Orbisius Child Theme editor.
Thank you and All the Best.