Introduction
WordPress developers added the ability to create child themes so you can build sub-themes based on the characteristics of a parent or master theme. A child theme allows you to use and modify a master theme, and then save the child theme separately without affecting the parent theme.
Why You Should Use WordPress Child Themes
A child theme lets you modify a parent theme as much (or as little) as you want. You can then change the child theme without impacting the parent theme or any other projects using it as an anchor for its own child themes.
How WordPress Child Themes Work
A child theme resides in a separate directory from the parent theme, and every child directory needs to include its own style.css and functions.php files. Additional customized files and file types can be added as needed, but those files are recommended for the theme to function properly.
Using the relevant .css and .php files, you can modify everything from styling and layout parameters to actual coding and scripts that the child theme uses, even if those scripts aren’t present in the parent theme directory.
Think of your child theme as an overlay sitting on top of the parent theme. When a visitor loads your website, WordPress first loads the child theme, and then inherits missing styles and functions from the parent theme. As a result, the majority of your background coding still pulls from the parent directory but is modified according to the child theme’s parameters before the content displays on the page.
Installing Wilcity Child Theme
- Extract wilcity-package.zip (If you haven’t downloaded it yet, please go to http://themeforest.net/downloads). In this folder, you will see wilcity-childtheme.zip
- Log into your WordPress account
- Click on Appearance -> Themes -> Add New -> Install the wilcity-childtheme.zip ->
- Finally, Activate it.
