In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the super simple steps of installing a child theme on GeneratePress. Literally within two minutes, you’ll have a blank child theme installed on your website.
Let’s find out how to do it.
GeneratePress Child Theme
According to GeneratePress documentation, you can download the official blank starter child theme here.
The two simple steps to install are:
- Save the generatepress_child.zip file on your computer
- From your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme and upload the .zip file
Once you have uploaded and installed the child theme, the only thing left to do is activate it.
It goes without saying that you’ll need the GeneratePress parent theme installed for this to work. While a free version is available, I recommend the premium version of GeneratePress which you can install on unlimited websites.
How To Use a Child Theme
Most people are interested in a child theme to write custom functions and/or alter the appearance of their website.
These type of changes are implemented in Appearance > Theme Editor. When in here, just make sure the GeneratePress Child Theme is selected for editing.
By default, two files ship with the blank GeneratePress child theme.
- style.css
- functions.php
These files are mostly blank and are here for you to edit as necessary. Most of the time (especially for those who aren’t too familiar with coding) you’ll simply paste in a snippet of code into your child theme’s function.php file.
How Does a WordPress Child Theme Work?
A WordPress child theme pretty much inherits all the functionality of its parent theme, thus allowing you to add additional functionality without the risk of screwing things up.
In other words, you can work in a “sandbox” with child theme. Feel free to add custom functions, shortcode, and stylesheets as necessary.
For the most part, none of your modifications will ever change the foundation of the theme. While you can of course alter the functionality and appearance of the theme, there is zero chance of permanently altering its behavior.
This is mostly because of a computer science concept called inheritance. Inheritance essentially allows one portion of code to leverage the functionality of similar code.
In a worst-case scenario, you can always uninstall your child theme and your original WordPress theme will still work properly.
That’s about it for this tutorial. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
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