A new design concept has been spreading through the WordPress theme development community that uses child themes to keep your main theme intact so you can update the themes easily when newer versions of WordPress comes out.
Bloggers who heavily edit their themes to get that special look for their blog should definitely be looking in to using child themes. Bloggers who use themes right out of the box and make no changes at all don’t have to worry about this.
According to Justin Tadlock; “if you plan on modifying the background color of the theme, then you should create a child theme. Yes, even if that’s the only change you plan on making.”
I’ll leave the experts to explain to you more information on child themes and the how’s and why’s to use them.
Justin Tadlock’s explains about child themes and why he designs for the use of them.
Ian Stewart explains in a little more depth what child themes are.
Demetris has put to together a pictorial for beginners using child themes.
Chris Pearson took a slightly different approach with his free Copyblogger theme, using a custom.css file to make your changes in.
Links above open in a new window so you can easily find your way to each of them.
What do you think of using child themes on your blog? Share your thoughts with us by commenting below.
