What is a WordPress Child theme?

WordPress Child theme is a theme that inherits the features, styling and functionality of another theme called parent theme. Child themes are the best ways to modify your WordPress theme without making any changes to the parent theme files.

If you modify a theme directly, your modifications may be lost when the theme gets updated. To resolve this problem, child theme introduced and rather modifying the core theme directly, you can simply override them with the templates in a child theme. When the parent theme gets updated, your modification will be preserved in a child theme and applied to the updated theme version as well.

Your theme customizations will be safe in child theme from future upgrades of parent theme because you only update parent theme and all customizations are stored and protected in child theme which you never upgrade.

Advantages of a Child Theme:

Safe updates: You can easily modify your website using a child theme without making any changes to the parent theme files. Parent theme can safely be updated when a new version arrives as your theme modification will be preserved in a child theme and applied to the updated theme version as well.

Easy to Extend:  A child theme on a powerful theme framework allows you to extend the functionality of your website without coding much. You can modify the template files as per your needs.

Why we need to Use a Child Theme??

Using a child theme decision often depends on user needs. A WordPress user who constantly adding or modifying the functions of the website should consider creating and using a child theme for their website. It helps to reduce the risk of losing the modifications which made on parent theme.

In order to use a child theme, you must have installed the parent theme on your WordPress website. Child themes are often used with theme frameworks. These are the parent themes which offer a solid base to theme developers to build their own themes. Genesis is one of the popular theme frameworks. There are tons of child themes available for Genesis which can get from StudioPress.

Read: How to Choose A Perfect WordPress Theme For Your Blog??

Installing the WordPress child theme same as installing any other WordPress theme. But parent theme must install first in order to work child themes properly. After installing the theme, go to Appearance > Themes and activate the child theme in order to apply the modifications.

Hope this tutorial helps you to understand what is WordPress child theme and advantages of the child theme.

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