Child Themes- A Common Topic of Discussion Among WordPress Beginners

WordPress is an enticing web development platform that’s gathered the attention of web developers on a global scale. With numerous free-to-download plugins, WordPress has turned out to be a commendable platform for building websites with different goals. Scintillation themes and easy-to-understand functionality makes WordPress the best software for developing web portals with a difference. If you’re a beginner in WordPress development then you might obviously be struggling to gather best insights on utilizing WordPress features to the fullest. In my today’s article, I’ll be putting some light on one of the most common WordPress topics that have gained a place in the discussions of novice WordPress developers. Yes, I’ll be talking about child themes that are used during custom WordPress development.

What does a Child Theme mean?

Every WordPress website has a parent theme that can be customized as and when desired. You can hire WordPress developers who’ll be taking care of all the modifications that need to be done for your WordPress site’s theme. It’s here when the role of a child theme comes to play. A child theme is basically a theme that has the same looks and functionality as that of the core parent theme. The whole idea behind creating a child theme is to modify and add new functionality to the site’s parent theme without amending it directly. Hence, the parent WordPress theme is kept intact, with all alterations being done to the child theme.

Below, is a screen-shot where I’ve a child theme named as ‘canvas-child’ which contains all the files to which changes need to be made:

Is it beneficial to use a Child theme during WordPress theme customization process?

Now, this is the question I’d love to answer for my readers. Well, although creating a child theme sounds like an additional work, it can actually save you from a lot of troubles that can crop in once you’re done with modifying your WordPress site’s theme. Here’s a look at the benefits of using a child theme during theme customization:

• No fear of losing theme modifications after updating WordPress

It’s quite essential for you to update your WordPress website to affirm its synchronization with the ever-changing WordPress trends. If you’ve modified your site’s parent theme and are thinking about an update then you’re probably going to enter a danger zone. This is because modifying the site’s theme directly may let you lose all your modifications. Unlike this, using a child theme for making changes to the site’s parent theme is what can help you avoid the risk of losing theme changes after the site has been updated to a recent WordPress version.

• Easy to restore site’s original theme

There are situations when changing a certain aspect of your site’s theme might interfere with a different function and tend to hamper the overall site functionality. Here, removing all the modifications from scratch can be a daunting task. Working with a child theme will allow you to restore the site’s original theme by getting rid of files that have been causing the trouble.

• You’re sentient about the changes done to the site’s theme

Using a child theme will allow you to stay posted regarding all the changes that have been done to the site’s core theme. Whether you’ve modified a duo of features or the entire site’s theme, you’ll be able to maintain a step-by-step report containing a list of changes done to the parent theme. All the modifications are saved into the child theme’s folder and you can access it to get the complete details regarding theme modification process.

Summary

If you take my words, I actually don’t see any hitch in building and using a child theme during WordPress theme customization itinerary. You can definitely go ahead with using a child theme for customizing your core theme in a hassle-free and stress-free way.

Author Bio

Jason is an innovative and experimental veteran developer, who now devote his time in advising its clients to hire wordpress Developers. He is associated with OSSMedia an experienced and iconic Custom wordpress development services, which has delivered a wide array of web development projects in past.

Jason Roiz is a fervent, self driven tech expert working in close tandem with a leading Software development company.