How to Create a WordPress Child Theme: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re looking to customize your WordPress theme without losing your changes after an update, creating a child theme is the best solution. A child theme allows you to make customizations without affecting the parent theme, ensuring that your changes are preserved even when the parent theme is updated.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of creating a child theme in WordPress, step by step.

What Is a Child Theme?

A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits the functionality, styles, and features of another theme, known as the parent theme. With a child theme, you can safely modify or extend the parent theme’s functionality without making changes directly to the parent theme itself.

Step 1: Create a Child Theme Folder

1. Access your website’s files via FTP or File Manager (in cPanel).
2. Navigate to the wp-content/themes directory.
3. Create a new folder for your child theme. Name it something recognizable, like your-theme-child (e.g., if your parent theme is “Astra,” name it astra-child).

Step 2: Create the Style.css File

The style.css file is essential for every WordPress theme, including child themes. This file contains metadata and styles for your child theme.

1. Inside the newly created child theme folder, create a file named style.css.
2. Add the following code to the style.css file:

/*
Theme Name: Your Theme Child
Theme URI: http://example.com/your-theme-child
Description: A child theme for the Your Theme theme.
Author: Your Name
Author URI: http://example.com
Template: parent-theme-folder-name
Version: 1.0.0
*/

/* Additional Custom Styles for the Child Theme */

Step 3: Create the functions.php File

The functions.php file allows you to add custom functions, hooks, and features to your child theme. It can also be used to enqueue styles and scripts.

1. In your child theme folder, create a new file named functions.php.
2. Add the following code to enqueue the parent theme’s style:


// Enqueue parent theme style
function my_theme_enqueue_styles() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'parent-style', get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
// Optional: Add custom styles for child theme
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_uri(), array('parent-style') );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_theme_enqueue_styles' );

This code ensures that both the parent theme’s CSS and your child theme’s CSS are loaded on your site.

Step 4: Activate Your Child Theme

Now that you’ve created the child theme’s style.css and functions.php files, it’s time to activate it:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Navigate to Appearance > Themes.
3. You should see your child theme listed there.
4. Click Activate on your child theme.

After activation, your website will use the child theme, inheriting the design and functionality of the parent theme.