Child themes allow you to make small or large changes to the parent theme’s design or structure in an update safe way. Any changes made in the Our theme child theme override original files.
To get started with using a child theme you’ll first need to have the Our theme theme installed, then install and activate the child theme that comes bundled with Our theme.
Design changes
You can add custom CSS to your child theme by saving it in the style.css file. This can be added in various ways but the two most common are
– Go to WP Admin > Appearance > Editor > Our theme Child > Style.css
– Editing style.css directly via your favourite code editor. Navigate to /wp-content/themes/our theme-child/style.css
Note: You may find you do not have an ‘Editor’ option under the ‘Appearance’ menu. This is because it has been disabled in your wp-config.php file.
Additional code
You can add custom PHP to your child theme by saving it in the functions.php file. This can be added in various ways but the two most common are
– Go to WP Admin > Appearance > Editor > Our theme Child > Functions.php
– Editing functions.php directly via your favourite code editor. Navigate to /wp-content/themes/our theme-child/functions.php
Note: Entering custom code in your functions.php via the editor may result in an error that takes your website offline. If this happens you should connect via SFTP / FTP and remove the code from /wp-content/themes/our theme-child/functions.php.
Note: You may find you do not have an ‘Editor’ option under the ‘Appearance’ menu. This is because it has been disabled in your wp-config.php file.
File structure
You can edit template files by copying them from the Our theme folder to the Our theme child folder. You’ll find there is no other folder structure in the Our theme child theme by default and you will have to create the folders to match the identical path yourself.
Example:
If you wish to edit the Paid Memberships Pro checkout template then you would copy the checkout.php file from the path below
/wp-content/themes/our theme/paid-memberships-pro/pages/checkout.php
Navigate to your Our theme child theme folder and create the below folders (shown in bold)
/wp-content/themes/our theme-child/paid-memberships-pro/pages/
Once the folder structure is in place copy your checkout.php file into the newly created pages folder.
/wp-content/themes/our theme-child/paid-memberships-pro/pages/checkout.php
You can now safely edit the copy of checkout.php from within your child theme.
Further reading
You can read more about child themes at WordPress.org
