How to create child themes in WordPress

Child Themes in WordPress

If you have been associated with website designing and development or want to get your business website designed by someone, you must have come across the concept of child theme at some point of time. A child theme for WordPress can be defined as a type of WordPress theme which inherits all of its functionalities from another existing WordPress theme, also referred to as the parent theme. The child themes are used frequently for tweaking or customizing a current WordPress theme without actually losing the scope to upgrade the theme in future. The effectiveness and widespread benefits of a child theme has led to leading web design companies like Webzguru strongly recommend it for its clients.

In the past, web designers and developers had no easy and effective way of upgrading their WordPress themes without actually losing any of their custom styling options or changes that are available with the earlier version. This becomes a major problem when you discover a smart end script that is widely used in popular themes and can be advantageous for the website. You want to upgrade the WordPress themes immediately but you have no way to do so. It really becomes a difficult choice as this would mean that you lose all custom styles that you have made so far. On the other hand, the WordPress website that you have made runs the risk of getting hacked unless you update the site quickly enough.

It is in such regard that using a child theme becomes very important. With the introduction of a child theme, such a problem can be easily resolved. A WordPress child theme is going to have all the features, functionalities and coding of parent theme without any kind of alterations to the actual parent theme itself. Such an advantage can make it a lot easier to enhance the styling of a parent theme as well as add and modify features without effectively losing the scope for updating the parent theme. While it is true that all WordPress themes can have their own child themes in theory, not all types of WordPress themes can be described as good parent themes. The parent themes that come with limited features and functionalities cannot be considered as ideal parent themes. Good parent themes are often described as theme frameworks and they usually contain th          eir own filters and hooks. This allows the developers and designers to come up with a custom WordPress site that is robust and efficient and have highly effective child themes.

Here are the main steps associated with creating a child theme for WordPress:

• Create a new folder and then name it in any way you like.
• Create a new file with the title style.css.
• Now open style.css and write theme name and template.
• Create a file with the title functions. php and then paste the code required for importing parent themes style.
• Once you are done, zip the folder for uploading it through Appearance -> Themes -> Add New
• 6.Finally activate the theme for the best results.

Following these steps is going to help you create a powerful child theme for WordPress.

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