WordPress Child Themes & Why You Should be Using Them

Are you tired of losing customizations to your theme after installing updates? A child theme is a separate set of files used to make changes to a theme with no impact to the original theme code. In this Meetup you will learn what a child theme is and when should you use one. This step-by-step walk-through will give you a solid understanding of what child themes are and how to create your own child themes!

Transcript

1. CHILD THEMES & Why You Should Be Using Them! WordPress Meetup Southwest Florida Downtown Fort Myers @wpswfl
2. Hello! I’M GUY CICINELLI I enjoy making websites, classic cocktails, and homemade limoncello. You can find me at: @GuyCicinelli
3. 1. SO, WHAT IS A CHILD THEME? A theme that inherits its functionality from another theme, called a parent theme.
4. “ Customizations made in a child theme are kept separate from the parent theme’s files - letting you upgrade the parent theme without affecting the customizations you’ve made to your site.
5. CHILD THEMES - THE PROS ◦ Customize Functions and CSS ◦ Safe Updates ◦ No Need to Track Changes ◦ Easy to Restore or Fallback ◦ Create Custom Page Templates or a 404 Error Page
6. CHILD THEMES - THE CONS ◦ It takes time ◦ Support ends for your parent theme ◦ If you find that you are making a lot of changes to the code - you might want to make your own theme instead ◦ That’s really it
7. So CHILD THEMES ? Use child themes to test new functions, CSS customizations, and to prevent theme updates from breaking your website.
8. 2. HOW TO MAKE A CHILD THEME Let’s start with the basics
9. style.css YOU REALLY JUST NEED 2 FILES: functions.php Place files in a folder in your themes directory
10. Create the style.css file You can grab the template code from: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/
11. Create the functions.php file You can grab the template code from: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/
12. Zip up the 2 FILES Zip up the folder and upload it via Appearance -> Themes -> Add New And then Activate it.
13. OR JUST USE A PLUGIN TO DO THE WORK! If you don’t want to jump through these hoops use a plugin to do that for you. There are free plugins that lets you easily create a child theme with a few clicks.
14. THANKS! Any questions? You can find me at: @GuyCicinelli gcicinelli@gmail.com