Always Setup a Child Theme for your WordPress Website

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I always recommend implementing a child theme for any WordPress theme. Every time? Yes, every time.

Consider this, when you update a setting under your main active theme’s “Appearance – Customize” menu these settings are applied only to the currently active theme. Meaning, if you switch to another theme or decide to add some custom coding via a child theme later on you would have to remember to transfer over all your active theme’s custom values. Switching back and fourth would quickly prove to be very frustrating and time consuming.

All too often I see “custom” WordPress websites from “experienced” designers with no regard for their client’s future web related needs. Please be sure that if your developer is using any one of the thousands of free or commercial WordPress themes, that they create and activate a child theme for your WordPress website. Implementing a child theme, from the very beginning, before adjusting any appearance settings will save you from having to replicate these adjustments at a future date.

 

WordPress Child Theme Setup #

A child theme inherits the look and feel of the parent theme and all of its functions, but can be used to make modifications to any part of the theme. In this way, any theme customization is kept separate from the parent theme’s files. Using a child theme lets you upgrade the parent theme without affecting the custom settings you’ve selected for your WordPress site.

Read the Child Themes article provided by WordPress to learn more.

 

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