The most famous CMS WordPress has the power to let us create and modify sites/blogs. And the best thing is that you do not need any professional to do all this, you can do everything on your own. Even you can alter the look of your current WordPress theme with the use of a child theme. Let’s get to know first that what a child theme in WordPress is and what are its advantages.
What is a WordPress Child Theme?
A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits its parent theme’s styling and functionalities. Child themes are used to modify existing themes while maintaining the code and design. For designers and developers, child themes are a blessing as they help them to create fresh new designs easily while using all the functionalities of a parent theme.
Advantages of Child Themes:
1. Keep the Parent Theme Safe
Child themes come into the play when you want to tweak a parent theme or an existing WordPress theme. To make any changes to the parent site, one uses a child theme’s style.css file, so there’s no need to worry about damaging the original one.
2. Updates Can’t Ruin Changes
The biggest problem that developers face is that whenever an update occurs, the changes get erased that they make. And because a child theme keeps its CSS safe from being removed, hence using child themes save you from such issues by protecting the code of the theme.
3. Fast Development
Developing themes becomes faster using WordPress child themes because one does not need to do coding from scratch, simply doing some edits in the parent one is enough to develop a new one.
4. No Need of FTP
Developers need File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to make adjustments. But while modifying child themes you do not need to invest time in FTP. You just need to create a file from cPanel File Manager and the remaining things can be done directly in WordPress.
5. Save Time
Coding an entire theme takes a whole lot of time but using a child theme can save your time while being an efficient yet cost-effective idea 🙂
6. Modify Popular Themes Easily
Anything becomes popular when it keeps updated and is user-friendly. Using a popular theme as your parent theme can ensure no faults and full functionality.
7. Create a Number of Similar Websites
Without making major modifications, one can simply create a new theme and using the same child theme’s CSS files can be used to modify multiple themes on various website.
8. No Much Need of Coding Knowledge
A website developer has to have a good coding knowledge to create a website theme on his own. But using child themes is probably the best way to build a WordPress theme in a safer way just by customizing the existing one while not having much programming skills.
9. Go Back to the Original Anytime
If you accidentally made any damage then you can reinstall or simply activate the original one to revert the damages. Isn’t it an example of good work organization?
10. New Website Look Whenever You Want
We all have a tendency to get attracted to beautiful things. Whenever we visit a website that fascinates us, we start thinking of changing ours with the same appearance. Child themes enable you to do that. Just create a child theme first, make required changes to its CSS file and a new design is in front of you 🙂
How do WordPress child themes sound to you? Have you ever used them? Tell us in the comments below.