WordPress Complete - Sixth Edition

Creating a child theme

If you've found an existing theme or theme framework that you like and you just want to adjust it a bit to fit your requirements hand-in-glove, you can create a child theme on top of this existing theme. A child theme uses the parent theme as a starting point and, without changing the theme itself, alters just the bits you want to alter.

As a matter of fact, using child themes is the recommended way of making modifications to any theme. The rule of thumb is simple--if you want to change anything at all about a stock theme (either inside the source code, graphics, or template files), do it through a new child theme.

In plain English, a child theme inherits the functionality and features of the parent theme. The biggest ...