What is a Child Theme For WordPress?
A child theme is a theme that inherits all the functionality and styling from its parent theme. You can modify the features of the theme without losing all the customization in the case of an update of the parent theme.
Why Use a #WordPress Child Theme and How to Create Onehttps://t.co/cEplxO0K3N #WordPressThemes pic.twitter.com/Ng2vhBSWhM
— Judith Kallos (@IStudio) June 7, 2017
Why Should You Use a WordPress Child Theme?
There are several advantages of using WordPress child theme as mentioned below.
- There is always an adequate scope to do customization or adding new features in WordPress child theme.
- It gives you a scope to override the base theme in WordPress if you don’t like.
- It also ensures that when you update WordPress or parent theme your child theme is unaffected.
- You need not worry if you leave something out of a child theme as the parent theme can easily provide the functionality.
- When there is a WordPress theme update the changes which you made in WordPress child theme will not get affected.
- If you are using a framework as a parent theme then you can easily extend the functions as per your need.
Step 1
Install the Child theme just as you would for any other WordPress theme.
In your WordPress admin area, go to Appearance » Themes page and click on the Add New button.
If your child theme is available as a free theme on WordPress.org theme directory then type the name of the child theme in the search box.
After you have found your child theme, click on the install button.
If your child theme is in a .zip format, first click on the ‘Upload Theme’ button, select the zip file, and then hit on the ‘Install Now’ button.
Step 2
If the parent theme is available in WordPress.org theme directory, WordPress automatically installs the parent theme. However, you cannot install child theme if parent theme is missing, in that case, you have to manually.
To manually install the parent theme, first, go to your WordPress parent theme website to download the zip file.
Now go to Appearance » Themes page and click on the Add New button.
Click the ‘Upload Theme’ button next click on ‘Choose File’, then select the zip file and then click the ‘Install Now’ button to install WordPress child theme.
Now without any worry, you can customize your WordPress child theme.