I made my WordCamp speaking debut at WordCamp Manchester speaking about how to make a wordpress child theme. This beginner level talk introduced child themes to the audience, gave an example as to why you should use them, as well as how to build and structure them.
It also dispels some common myths, and introduces good starting points for child themes.
How To Make a WordPress Child Theme Presentation Slides
http://www.slideshare.net/rhyswynne/wcmcr-how-to-get-your-first-child-theme-off-the-ground
Feel free to share this presentation!
Video of the Talk
Key Tweetable Facts
Click on the links to tweet them.
- Child Themes speed up development time – as functionality has already been written
- Child themes allow you to securely update themes without having edits being overwritten.
- If you are new to WordPress theme development, child themes are a great way to learn.
Links Mentioned In This Talk
- Codex Entry on Child Themes – Used for the definition of the child theme, but also choc full of useful information.
Code Examples
- Example styles.css on Github – The example styles.css used in the talk, shows the header and how to structure the top of your file.
- Added red text to styles.css on Github – This is the same as the link above, but we’ve changed the paragraph text to red on lines 17-19.
- Added a h1 tag to page.php on Github – This is a clone of Twenty Thirteen’s page.php, but we’ve added a tag on line 30 to show it’s a child theme being used.
- Example Functions.php file on Github – This removes the title and replace with the word “Hello!”. Used for an example, please don’t use on a live site.
Example Themes
These are great starting blocks for WordPress themes.
- Underscores (_s) – Free – A starter theme (though not necessary a parent theme). Good for using as a base as a framework you could be building.
- Thematic – Free (though not been updated in a while), open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework
- Genesis (affiliate link) – $59.95 – popular framework that is designed for speed. Responsive and optimised for search engines.
- Peadig (affiliate link) – from $44.99 – Mobile first framework based on bootstrap. I use this probably the most out of all other themes.
Download Source Code
The source code built in this presentation can be downloaded from the below link.
Download Twenty Thirteen Child Source Code
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