Child Themes
A child theme includes everything from its parent theme by default. This includes the design and any of its functionality. But it can also be used to make customizations to the parent theme without directly modifying the parent theme’s files. This means that you (or your child theme’s users) can still receive updates to the parent theme without losing those modifications.
Child themes:
- Make your modifications portable and replicable.
- Keep customizations separate from the parent theme.
- Allow parent themes to be updated without losing your modifications.
On your child theme, you can rename the theme to any name you like.
Parent theme header fields
Theme Name is the only field required to work with WordPress core. This name must match with the folder name.
Child theme header fields
When building a child theme, there is one additional supported field: Template. This is used to designate the parent theme’s folder.
The Template field must match the parent theme’s folder name exactly (relative to the wp-content/themes directory) for this to work. Otherwise, WordPress will not be able to appropriately match them.