I think it’s time to let everyone in on one of my pet peeves (well, in WordPress at least) – direct changes to your theme, completely ignoring the handy dandy much-underutilized child theme. Sure, the old way is quick and easy, but it’s a downright mess – still, let’s back up a bit to understand what I’m talking about.

What is a WordPress Child Theme?

A WordPress child theme is a theme that uses all of the files of its parent (including all of the functionality), but allows for modification. While you could always modify your existing theme’s files directly, this often results in a big, costly problem:

When you update a modified theme, all of your changes are lost.

While this isn’t a big problem if you’ve made the theme from scratch, chances are that’s not the case. Most site owners will grab a theme off of WordPress.org, an external repository like ThemeForest, or from a designer like WooCommerce. I won’t get into which themes I’d suggest (I got in trouble for that once already) though there are some great themes out there, and if you’re savvy with CSS then you might want to look into a framework. Regardless, that’s a whole different ball game, so back to it.

For a more technical explanation, a child theme is a specific set of files in a folder that overrides your default theme. Think of it like a second coat of paint – easy!

Why would I use a Child Theme?

Child Themes are useful because they allow modifications, but still let you keep your parent theme up to date. As an example, the free Storefront Theme from WooCommerce is a great starter if you’re looking to sell something online (and Canvas is good for everything else), but can look a bit standard or bland. You’re almost certainly going to want to customize it to fit your style – new fonts, colors, you name it.

SOME themes offer areas for you to add custom CSS and even PHP functions. That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t really give me too much comfort. You see, after all of your modifications where your site looks just perfect, an update to the theme will come around with improved performance, security, or new features. After you update, guess what happened to your hard-written design? It’s gone. Unless you have a backup, you’ll never see that again.

Child themes get around that! You get all of the benefits, security, updates, and (in some cases) support of the parent theme, but with your own personal style. The better question is “why shouldn’t you use a Child Theme?”, to which there is no answer.

Creating a Child Theme

Okay, so now that I’ve sold you on the concept, we get to the creation. Here’s where it typically gets a little sticky – not everyone is comfortable with code, and there does need to be a certain level of comfort to get a child theme set up properly. You can find a much more detailed explanation in the Codex page, but in short to have a child theme, you need the following files:

• A child theme directory (a dedicated folder in your wp-content/themes/ directory of your site)
• A style.css file
• A functions.php file

There is of course a bunch more you can do and include in a child theme, but that’s the bare minimum. The tricky part is formatting it – you need a very specific setup. Not only can this be overwhelming to newcomers, it can be tedious to those of us who create child themes all the time – IF ONLY THERE WERE A TEMPLATE SOLUTION!

I think you know where I’m going.

Introducing: The WordPress Child Theme Template!

In a spur-of-the-moment, I-should-probably-be-doing-something-else-right-now whim, I put together a quick template you can download, for free, to prepare a child theme for any theme out there. You will need to make some quick customizations to one file and to the folder name, but as long as you have a good text editor (I like Sublime Text or Atom, but WordPad and TextEdit are perfectly fine) it’s a breeze.

View on GitHub

Has it been done before? Of course! Is it still useful? You bet! With a few quick changes you can make following along with the README file, you can create a functional Child Theme in just a few minutes. From that point on, all of your CSS and PHP changes will be done in your Child Theme, and any template overrides will be copying the files from your parent theme into your child and making modifications.

It’s under GPL just like every good WordPress creation, so feel free to modify it, use it personally or professionally, improve on it, or whatever else. Credit would also be nice, but if you’re the kind of jerk that removes credit from code, then there’s no reasoning with you.

Direct Link: https://github.com/DanielSantoro/wordpress-child-theme

What’s it got in there?

First of all, it has all of the files and folders to get you started. Depending on your needs you might not need the assets folder (though it doesn’t hurt to have there) or you might need to add more, but all of the essentials are there:

• A style.css with an appropriate header (this is where you’ll make changes to rename your child theme and add a description). Additionally, I’ve included a meticulously structured CSS template you can use – meant for theme development, it should hopefully encourage you to keep your customizations nice and neat for later reference.
• A functions.php (theme functions) file that already is set to pull the parent styles
• A placeholder image/thumbnail
• A bit of a starter guide on next steps and getting started

What can’t it do?

• It can’t make a child theme of a child theme. See the first FAQ question for more details on this.
• It can’t apply if you switch parent themes. You would need to change the information in your child theme’s style.css – while that isn’t a big deal, things like CSS classes and PHP hooks are likely to change between themes, unless they’re by the same (organized) author.
• It can’t help you pick up dates. I mean, I guess it could if they were really into WordPress coding, but don’t hold your breath or anything.

What should my folder structure look like?

If you log in to FTP using a client like FileZilla or Cyberduck (both free), then you need to be able to find your WordPress installation – it’s where your wp-config.php file is. From there, you’ll see a folder called wp-content – after that, it should look something like this:

FAQ

Hopefully this gives you a leg up on your next project. I’d love to hear from you on if this helped you out, if you have ideas on how to improve it, or if you have any questions I may have not addressed – just post in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!