What is a Child Theme in WordPress
Written by Randy A. Brown WordPress Enthusiast & Technology Writer
January 25, 2023
Customization is one of the many strengths of WordPress. Any WordPress theme can be customized, adjusted, and expanded. Some of those customizations require the use of a child theme. Without a child theme, all of your hard work customizing your WordPress website could be deleted when the theme updates.
In this post, we’ll examine what a child theme is in WordPress. We’ll see how they’re different from a regular WordPress theme, see why you need one, and see how to make your own WordPress child theme.
What is a WordPress Parent Theme?
Before we can define a child theme, we should define a parent theme. A parent theme is a standard WordPress theme complete with all the template files. It can work on its own with no other files needed. Aside from child themes, every WordPress theme is a parent theme.
What is a WordPress Child Theme?
A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits its styling and functionality from another theme, called a parent theme.
The child theme requires the parent theme to be installed to work. In other words, the child theme works like an add-on to the parent theme. Any changes made to the child theme override the parent theme. This means you can add features, customize CSS, etc., without making changes to the parent theme. The parent theme’s settings will display unless they’ve been overridden by the child theme.
Why You Need a WordPress Child Theme
Of course, one of the advantages of WordPress is that you can add template files and make customizations to your theme. If you’ve made changes to the parent theme’s code, you won’t be able to update the theme if you want to keep your changes. This creates security issues and can cause compatibility problems with newer versions of WordPress.
WordPress themes are often updated to reduce security issues, fix bugs, add new features, and provide code improvements. When a parent theme is updated, all of its files are overwritten with the new default files. This includes all code added to the CSS style sheet, any changes to PHP files, and any additional code added to the theme’s files.
To keep those customizations in place, you’ll need a child theme. The child theme allows designers to make changes to the theme’s files without losing those changes when the parent theme updates. Without a child theme, we’d lose any custom code we’ve added to theme files as they would be overwritten during the update. With a child theme, a user can customize the look of a parent theme without changing any of the parent theme’s code.
This also allows designers to create lots of child themes with different designs based on the same foundational code. They can create new designs without having to create the core functionality every time. The child themes can look completely different from the parent theme and add new features. The parent theme can be more general while the child themes can be specific to certain genres such as eCommerce or blogging. You can even save your child theme as a backup or to use on other websites. Only one child theme can be active at a time.
When You Need a WordPress Child Theme
Not everyone needs a child theme in every case.
You Need a Child Theme if…
You only need a child theme if you want to make changes to the theme’s files. This means opening the stylesheet or PHP files to make changes in the code.
You Don’t Need a Child Theme if…
You don’t need a child theme for basic theme settings. Basic settings that do not require you to make changes in code will not be changed when the parent theme updates. This includes the Theme Customizer, Site Editor, and any settings built into the WordPress theme. These adjustments do not add new features to the parent theme. They only adjust the styling.
For example, the image below shows the header adjustments in the Site Editor. Any changes will not be overwritten when the theme updates.










