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Are you wanting to customize your WordPress theme with Child Theme?

In this easy steps guide, we will show you how to create a WordPress child theme on your WordPress site.

What do you need to create a child theme?

Creating a Child Theme requires a little more experience with HTML and CSS to understand the changes you need to make to achieve your goal. A little bit of knowledge of PHP is also helpful for you. You also should familiar to copying and pasting codes from several sources.

Why do you need a child theme on your website?

Child Themes are the best way to make changes to your WordPress site because it saves valuable time and effort. A Child Theme is a WordPress theme that assumes the functionalities, features, and styles of other themes. By using a child theme you can customize your website without making any changes to your Parent Theme. It also makes it safe to update your WordPress theme. Because you modified the child theme, not the parent theme, you won’t lose any customization when you update a parent theme.  After creating a child theme, if you are satisfied with it, you can use it on another WordPress site.

Creating a Child Theme:

You can create a child theme manually by coding or you can create a child theme using a WordPress Plugin.
Here we will show you two easy ways to create a child theme on WordPress.

1. Creating a Child Theme using code
2. Creating a Child Theme using a Plugin

1. Creating a Child Theme using code

First, you have to open/ wp-content/ themes/ file in your WordPress installation folder and create a new folder for your child theme. You can name the folder anything you want. For example, you can name it as a child of the existing parent theme.

Next, you need to create the first two folder to your child theme. Now start by creating a text file and name it “style.css”. To make a new style sheet work properly, you will need to insert a little bit of code called Style Sheet Header. The header adds required information. Such as the new theme’s name, the name of the template or parent theme, and licensing information.

Now copy-paste the parent theme’s style sheet to the new file and customize it to meet your needs. This is your child theme’s main style sheet.

The next thing you have to do is create a new file named “function.php”. Create this file inside the child theme folder and paste the required code from the source. This file allows you to add more features and functions to your new theme.

Now you have created the basic child theme and when you navigate to Appearance>>Themes you should see the new child theme’s name. Click on Activate button to start working with your child theme on your WordPress site.

Since you didn’t customized anything on your child theme, your site will use the functionality, features, and appearance from the parent theme. Now you can move on to the next section where you will customize your child theme.

2. Creating a Child Theme Using a Plugin

Child Theme Configurator is a simple usable WordPress Plugin that lets you create and customize a child theme for your WordPress site quickly without coding a word.

Firstly, you have to install and activate the Child Theme Configurator plugin.

For activation you need to click on Tools>> Child Theme in your WordPress Dashboard. Here you have to select the parent theme from the tab named Parent/Child.

After selecting the parent theme you will see an Analyze button. Click on it. The plugin will make sure the theme is perfect as a parent theme. Now you will be asked to name the child theme folder and choose where to save the styles.

Next, you will be asked to choose how the parent theme stylesheet will be accessed. Leave it as the default setting.

If you want to copy the menus and widgets from your parent theme to child theme you can check the section 8 box, if you’d like to do this.

Finally hit on the Create new Child Theme button to create a child theme for your WordPress site.

This plugin will create a folder for your child theme and also create the “style.css” and the “functioin.php” files, which you will use to customize the theme later.

[Note: Before activating the theme you should click the link on the top of the screen to check and make sure if the theme looks good on your site.]  

That’s it! We hope this easy-step guide helps you in creating your first WordPress Child Theme.

Have a nice time and stay with us.

Thank You!