What is a WordPress Child Theme?

What is a WordPress Child Theme? Hero Image

Selecting a WordPress theme is often a tough decision for business owners since they want it to be a perfect reflection of their company and their customers. However, even the perfect theme needs to be tweaked occasionally.

Instead of finding an entirely new theme, you can make minor changes to your website by creating a WordPress child theme. These child themes can be created manually or with plugins and won’t impact your overall theme. Here’s what you need to know about how a WordPress child theme works and when you should create one.

Child Themes Don’t Affect Parent Themes

An important aspect of child themes to know about is that any changes you make to your website won’t be removed if your parent theme has to be updated. On a similar note, if you decide you don’t want to continue with the child theme you created, you can simply delete it and it won’t impact the parent theme. It will just go back to what it was before you created the WordPress child theme. This gives you the flexibility to experiment with different features on your WordPress business website until you find exactly what you want.

Creating A WordPress Child Theme

If you’re skilled at website development in WordPress, you can manually create a child theme. However, not only does this take a significant amount of time, but it can also create more issues if it’s not done correctly. Most business owners create a child theme using a WordPress plugin since it’s quick, simple and doesn’t require a lot of WordPress knowledge. It’s highly recommended to use a plugin to create a WordPress child theme to keep things simple and safe.

When You’re Ready For A Change, Incorporate Child Themes

Now comes the all-important question of when a WordPress child theme should be created. There’s no right or wrong answer to this, as it mostly depends on the functionality of your current parent theme and if any changes are needed. Sometimes aesthetic changes may be desired or you may not like how a certain item is displayed. This is the perfect time to incorporate a WordPress child theme since you can always go back to the default theme if you don’t like it for any reason.

InMotion Hosting is dedicated to helping you build your WordPress business website. Our WordPress hosting is fine-tuned to deliver the highest performance levels, strict security measures and top-notch support. Whether you’re just getting started building your first website or you need assistance with your existing website, feel free to contact us at any time to see how we can help you optimize yours.

Learn more about the power of WordPress Themes and how they can simplify your website building and maintenance.

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