Child themes are a simple but powerful way to customize a pre-made theme. Learning how to use them properly means you’ll never risk losing all your modifications when the developer releases a new version and you update the theme. Using easy-to-follow language, I’ll walk you through the steps to set up a child theme on your laptop’s WordPress installation and we’ll make some tweaks together – from CSS adjustments to more substantial changes in functionality.
Prerequisites:
- You should be comfortable with HTML and CSS basics, and have at least a general sense of WordPress theme file structure.
- Some beginner PHP knowledge is helpful but not required.
- Bring a laptop to follow along with the practical portion of the workshop.
- You’ll need a fresh localhost install of WordPress set up on your laptop, so be sure to attend the “Setting Up a Local Web Server Environment” workshop right before this one if you don’t already have one.
Important
To help the workshop go smoothly – since we can’t always rely on stable Wifi at WordCamps – please download ahead of time:
- A copy of the Penscratch theme.
- A copy of the workshop slides (11 MB) so you’ll be able to copy-paste pieces of code.
- Sample images folder (2.4 MB). You’re welcome to use your own images from your hard drive instead.
- If you don’t already have one, a text/code editor like Atom, TextWrangler (Mac only), Sublime Text. Install it so it’s ready to go.
Slides: http://zooninidev.com/child-theming/
