WordPress Child Theme
Okay, it might sound a wee bit condescending but the WordPress child theme isn’t what it seems.
If anything, we put it in place to keep your website safe.
The differences between a Child Theme and a Parent Theme
For you to understand what a child theme is, it’s best to explain it in relation to a parent theme.
What is the child theme?
A child theme is a modified version of the parent theme that cannot function on its own. You can use it to store custom PHP and CSS code and modify your parent theme. Then, when it’s time to update, you can safely update the parent theme without affecting the child theme. Put simply, a child theme allows you to tinker with your WordPress site. Through it, you can alter its appearance and add extra functionality whilst retaining basic functionality.
What’s so great about it?
Change or add additional functionality or adapt your sites styling, without compromising it
Child themes are the safest and most recommended way of making changes to your site
What is the parent theme?
All themes – excluding child themes – are considered parent themes. Parent themes embody the entirety of the required WordPress template files and assets needed for the theme to function. Whereas a child theme may only contain one style.css file and few lines of CSS. Parent themes on the other hand, contain a complete file structure; including templates and a fully coded style sheet. If an inexperienced user directly tinkers with this, the website could run into a whole host of issues. For a start, you’d have to think twice before an update because it would purge all your changes and more!
What’s so great about it?
It’s WordPress, baby! At its heart, WordPress is a fantastic tool – in the right hands
Whilst it presents a complex range of customisations, it should be left to the professionals
Why do we work with the WordPress Child Theme?
Our skilled developers are a dab hand at all aspects of WordPress.
However, we install the Child Theme on our client’s websites so that they don’t comprise anything! It’s unfortunate but one innocent change could instigate a domino effect and sink your website into the depths of the interweb. Child themes are often used when you want to customise or tweak an existing WordPress theme without losing the ability to update that theme. Otherwise, an update could spell disaster for your website – especially when a widely used script in a popular theme has a major exploit. In this instance, you’d be faced with two definitive choices:
Do I update my parent theme and lose all of my custom styles?
Should I ignore the issue and risk hackers breaking into my website?
This is why we use a child theme.
A child theme is a basic added level of protection. Think of it less as a child and more of a net or a holding area. It’s here that all your unique customisation goes INSTEAD of the parent theme itself. That way, you can customise or tweak any existing WordPress themes – without losing the ability to safely update it.
Our Other Services
When building a website, it’s important we’re well informed of your needs and what you need us to achieve. We can guide you through all the ins and outs of WordPress and get your website looking clean and pristine. Better yet at Expect Best, our friendly team of creatives can help you with anything in the digital world. From SEO and social campaigns right through to website design and development. If you want to know more about a particular service of ours or you want to proceed with WordPress then simply get in touch.