Transcript of video (modified slightly to read better)
Hi, in this quick vid, I’m going to show you how to Install a child theme in WordPress.
Reference: What is a child theme?
How to Install a Child Theme in WordPress
The reason we might do this is so you can add specific code in to alter the original theme, as you don’t want to do this in the original theme. You want to do it in the child theme so it (the parent theme) doesn’t get overwritten once you update your parent theme.
- So, go down to ‘Plugins’, click ‘Add New’ and in the search box type ‘Child Theme’.
- The one I use is this one here (see screenshot below) because it’s been updated recently, and it’s also got lots of installations (so basically it means that it’s probably a good one).
- Click ‘Install Now’.
- Then click ‘Activate’.
- Ok, that’s now installed, so now we can set up the child theme.
- So, if you go down to the ‘Tools’ panel and click on ‘Child Themes’.
- Make sure you tick this section here, ‘Create a new Child Theme’. See screenshot below.
- And you can see in Section 2 it says, ‘Select a Parent Theme’.
- It’s already chosen my parent theme which is Divi.
- Next we click ‘Analyse’. See screenshot below.
- Once completed, you will see – ‘this theme appears ok to use as a child theme’.
- So, we know it’s safe for us to go ahead and create the new child theme.
- If you scroll down to the (blue) button and then click ‘Create new Child Theme’.
- Finally, that’s done.
- I always double check everything.
- So if you go back to the ‘Appearance’ panel and click on ‘Themes’, you can see there’s the Divi Child theme.
- We need to activate that now.
- And that’s going to replace our parent theme which is this one (the active one).
- Then click ‘Activate’.
- See screenshot below.
- And then, if I go to the front of the site, you can see there’s no issues, there’s no error messages, there’s no weird looking code.
- Obviously, there’s nothing in this site, that’s why it looks like that (empty), but we know that there’s no errors.
- So, if I go back into the ‘Dashboard’ and go back down to ‘Tools’ and then ‘Child Themes’.
- See screenshot below.
- I’m just going to show you this extra tab called ‘Files’.
- If you click on that you can see that these are some other pages that you could add into the child theme as well.
- The ‘header.php’ and the ‘footer.php’ are common pages to add, so we might add them (select the pages).
- Then go down and click ‘Copy Selected to Child Theme’.
- Once completed, you can see they’ve added the extra files in.
- The next thing we will do is just go and double check that.
- So go back to the ‘Appearance’ panel and then click on ‘Theme Editor’.
- You should see the files there – ‘header.php’ and the ‘footer.php’.
- See screenshot below.
- That’s it.
- Basically, what I’ve just shown you is how to install a child theme.
- One thing I forgot to mention is, if you have customised CSS in the parent theme, make sure you copy that over and paste it into the new child theme.
- For example, if I go to ‘Appearance’ and then ‘Customise’, and go to ‘Additional CSS’, if you have anything in here, in the original theme, copy that first.
- And then you can paste it in the same section in the child theme.
- See screenshot below of customized css section. (My test site is empty but your site may have some custom css).
- So finally that’s it.
- Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.
