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.







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.


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

