Create a Child Theme? How do I create one simply?

how do I create a child theme tweet

Said every WordPress site owner ever.

Create a child theme? They are essential to making any kind of theme edits (without losing them when the parent has updates), and are incredibly useful, IF — and that’s a BIG if — you can figure out how to use them. This is one of those things that makes using WordPress frustrating. Technically the answer is already built in, and seems really simple, but there is little to no information on HOW to use it for what you need to get done. Like real world, just give it to me straight actionable information.

Child themes are too hard. I’ll just edit the parent.

This is what actually happens 9 times out of 10, even though it is against your better judgement. It seems to be the only option you have. At least the only viable one. Sure, child themes may be great, but without the knowledge of how to make them work for your site, what is the point in using them? The WordPress docs do explain them some, but not in a way that makes sense to PEOPLE who don’t have advanced degrees in alien linguistics, which is most of us.

If only there was an easy way to create a child theme.

Well, there is. Here’s what we do, any time we run into this issue for our own sites or client’s. It will take 5 to 10 minutes and doesn’t require any advanced knowledge.

1
Login to your WordPress admin
2
Go to Plugins, then Add New
Go to Plugins, then Add New
3
Search for a plugin called "Childify Me"
Search for a plugin called
4
Click "Install Now"
Click
5
Click "Activate"
Click
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Make sure the correct parent theme is enabled
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Go to Appearance, then Click Customize
Go to Appearance, then Click Customize
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You should see a small panel on the left hand side that says Childify Me
You should see a small panel on the left hand side that says Childify Me
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Click the button that says "Childify Me"
Click the button that says
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Type a child theme name in the box

Recommended: Name the child something with the parent theme’s name in it, so it isn’t hard to know which parent it comes from. Example: MyParentTheme-child. It makes things easier to remember.

Type a child theme name in the box
11
Click "Create"
Click
12
Click "Preview and Activate"

This will allow you to see if the child theme is displaying properly before you activate it.

Click
13
If you're happy with the preview, click "Save and Activate"
If you're happy with the preview, click


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videoOptimize Loading WordPress Images without Losing Quality

Optimize WordPress Image Loading without Losing Quality by resizing images without needing an external editor like Photoshop. This short online video tutorial to find out how to resize background images without losing resolution you need for clear crisp full screen background photos.

 



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Save Web Hosting Space: Prevent WordPress from Generating Unneeded Images

WordPress is great for many things, but there are a few things it does by default that are a little annoying. One of these is that WordPress generates various sizes of thumbnails without asking you which you want or need. By default you get the thumbnail size (approx. 150px), medium size (approx. 250 – 300px), and large size (approx. 500 – 800px), and the icon size to use in the interface (approx 32px), besides the original image you upload, which is whatever size you uploaded. This happens for every single image you upload, so you get 5-6 images by default for EACH IMAGE. That adds up fast. That can crash your website or gobble up your hosting space fast.

Some themes do change this to match the requirements of the theme, but they are usually additions to WordPress’s image sizes, not REMOVING the old ones and adding new ones. This can be a major problem and there isn’t a lot of documentation on it. Here is what you can do about it step by step.

1
Login to your WordPress admin panel.
Login to your WordPress admin panel.
2
Go to Settings and click on Media
Go to Settings and click on Media
3
you should see this screen
you should see this screen
4
Change all the boxes to 0 if you don't want that size generated

That’s it. You’re done!

Change all the boxes to 0 if you don't want that size generated


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videoCreating WordPress Custom Category Templates & WP_Query

Have you ever wanted to create a custom template for an individual category? Ever wondered how you can change what gets displayed on your homepage? If you’ve wanted to customize your blog by category, author, or other meta data, this video shows you how to edit the loop, with WordPress’s very powerful WP_Query. You can get just about any kind of posts you want or exclude certain kinds of posts as well.

As mentioned in the video, here is the code you need to manually create new pages in your WordPress theme WITHOUT the need for FTP at all. This is a great little trick I learned. Here’s the code you’ll need to put in the header.php file:

in php code:
touch(‘wp-content/themes/YOURTHEMENAME/category-SLUG.php’);

Don’t forget to replace YOURTHEMENAME and SLUG with the values you have, as explained in the video.

If it doesn’t work, you may need to turn on WordPress debug in your wp-config.php file. To do this, you will need access to that file, through FTP or through the cPanel of your hosting account. You need to add this line to the wp-config.php file:

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define('WP_DEBUG',true);
 

You can change this value to true later to turn the debug messages off. If you reload the homepage, you should see a message saying “cannot create file” and a brief description why. Usually “file or folder does not exist”.

You may need to use the full absolute path to the file you want to create. This is usually like:

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<?php touch('/home/USERNAME/public_html/YOURSITE.COM/wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/pagename.php'); ?>
 

Replacing the capitalized variables with your specifics.

Here is the WordPress Codex page that talks about ways to customize the loop with WP_Query. All the useful variable names are here so you can quickly find the type of posts you want in about 5 minutes. It is very straightforward and simple to do.

WP_Query on the Codex:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

 



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