How To Create a Child Theme in WordPress

Last time on the blog, I showed you how to install the WordPress theme using one of the three methods. Today, I wanted to talk about WordPress Child themes.

WordPress Parent theme

vs

Child Theme:

The theme that you installed, is called the Parent theme and it gets updated regularly. When you update the Parent theme, changes made using custom CSS or PHP will be lost.

A Child Theme is a theme based on the files from the Parent theme, but it allows you to keep your changes even if you update the Parent theme. It overwrites the original settings from the Parent Theme, for example, if you’d like to define custom image size, you’d have to add it in the fuction.php in the Child theme vs in Parent’s theme.

Child Theme uses the files from the Parent theme, so even if you have a Child theme, you need to keep the original theme in order for it to properly work. As a WordPress website designer, what I love about having a Child theme is that I can customize it for my clients and myself, so the theme information is custom (theme screenshot, author, description etc.)

All right, let’s dive in, shall we?!

HOW TO CREATE A CHILD THEME IN WORDPRESS

There are two ways of creating a Child Theme in WordPress:

1. Manual with the use of custom PHP

2. With the use of Plugin

For the sake of this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create it using the Plugin. The plugin that I always use to create a Child theme for my own website and for my clients is called Orbisius Child Theme Creator.

1. First, install the Orbisius Child Theme Creator plugin. If you don’t know how do to it, take a look at my post where I teach you how to install a WordPress plugins

2. Now in WordPress Dashboard go to Setting > Orbisius Child Theme Creator. Then choose Appearance > Orbisius Child Theme Creator

3. Choose the Parent theme > Tick “Switch theme to the new theme after it is created and “Customize title, description etc.” Customize the Title, Description, Theme Site, Author Name and Author Site.

4. Then click on Create Child Theme

5. And you’re done 😉

Creating a WordPress Child Theme using the plugin takes only a few minutes, but it can save you a lot of trouble when you update your Parent theme. I highly recommend creating the Child Theme just after you install the Parent theme. But don’t worry if you didn’t – you can create it anytime you want, it’s just sooner then better!