Creating a Child Theme in WordPress

CHILD THEMES IN WORDPRESSAMY M. YOUNG

Who am I?

Photographer (http://www.wildgirlproductions.com)Author (http://www.torrent-band.com)Occasional developerCo-Owner of Alternative Hosting

What is a child theme?A theme that inherits functionality from another WordPress theme (the parent theme). In theory any theme can be a parent theme

in practice - not all themes will workGood parent theme examples - Genesis/Thesis

Why should I create a child theme?

Hacking the main theme means it can’t be updated without losing changes

security risk!Speed up development

When should I use a child theme?

adding new functions to the functions.phptweaking css

What do I need to create a child theme?

A Parent ThemeA Basic Text Editor (i.e. - Notepad, TextWrangler)An FTP Client (FileZilla, CyberDuck)

CREATION OF A CHILD THEME FOLDERDAVID IS A CHILD THEME OF TWENTY FOURTEEN

THE MOST IMPORTANT FILE!

THE BASIC REQUIREMENTSSTYLE.CSS

BASIC LAYOUTSTYLE.CSS

CALL THE PARENT THEME CSS!

Child Theme or Theme Modification Plugin?

TimeAbilitySupport for the pluginStill good practice to use a child theme

When to modify Functions.php

To augment or replace the parent theme's functions.Beware: if a WordPress Plugin calls the same function, or filter, as you do in your functions file, the results can be unexpected, site disabling. For the most part you want to use plugins to do this

plugins will generally give the same result but across all themes

WHAT DOES FUNCTIONS.PHP LOOK LIKE?

QUESTIONS?

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email: amy@amymyoung.com