Child Themes

[Crumina team]

The simplest Theme possible is a child theme which includes only a style.css file, plus any images. This is possible because it is a child of another theme which acts as its parent.

[Crumina team]

Making a child theme is very simple. Create a directory by using FTP or whatever file management application your host provides. Put a properly formatted style.css file in it, and you have a child theme!

[Crumina team]

The child theme contains a “Template: parent-theme-dir” header to distinguish it from standalone themes. With a little understanding of HTML and CSS, you can make that very basic child theme modify the styling and layout of a parent theme to any extent without editing the files of the parent theme itself. That way, when the parent theme is updated, your modifications are preserved.

[Crumina team]

For this reason, child themes are the recommended way of making modifications to a theme.

With a basic understanding of PHP, WordPress Templates, and the WordPress Plugin API, you can make the child theme extend virtually every aspect of a parent theme, and again, without actually changing the parent theme files.

[Crumina team]

A child theme resides in its own directory in wp-content/themes. The scheme below shows the location of a child theme along with its parent theme (Twenty Twelve) in a typical WordPress directory structure:

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