Child themes allow you to make changes without affecting the original theme’s code, which makes it easy to update your parent theme without erasing your changes.

By creating a child theme, you create a separate set of files that you can use to customize the theme without affecting the original theme at all. Not only does this make updating easier, it also makes sure that you will never ruin your original theme as you are never actually modifying the files.

You can always turn off your child theme and fall back on the original.

Using a Child Theme

There are a number of ways you can use a child theme:

• custom formatting in the style sheet
• custom function
• custom template or page (replicate the same file structure in the child theme)