WordPress: Building Child Themes

Course details

Learning how to create a child theme is the first step to becoming a WordPress developer. Child themes are a great entry point, as they’re built on top of an existing theme with a properly coded foundation. The skills you use during development are the same ones you leverage for writing brand-new themes and plugins. Learn how to use child themes to create your own custom, stylish new WordPress sites—without the advanced knowledge of a web developer. Instructor Patrick Rauland explains how to get started picking a parent theme, updating the CSS, creating a new template for your child theme, and updating its functionality. By the end of this practical, project-based course, you should have a functioning child theme and the skills to quickly customize your next WordPress site.

Learning objectives
Setting up your development environment and editor
Picking a parent theme
Creating a child theme
Including style sheets
Creating and modifying styles
Modifying functions
Hooking functions
Creating and modifying template files
Adding menus and functionality
Migrating theme files to a live WordPress site

Concepts

Introduction

Level up to WordPress developer
What you need to know
Using the exercise files

Building on a Solid Foundation

Set up a local development environment
Set up a code editor
Use real content

Creating a Child Theme

What is a child theme
Picking a parent theme
Creating and activating a child theme
Including stylesheets
Best practices for including stylesheets

Child Themes and CSS

Employing the laziness principle
Designing in the browser
Modify existing styles
Add new styles
Challenge - Add flair
Solution - Add flair

Working with Function Files

Understanding functions.php
Finding functions in the parent theme
Modify a pluggable function
Hooks, filters, and action
Filter a function
Hooking functions
Challenge - Change posted by
Solution - Change posted by

Working with Template Files

Template hierarchy in WordPress
Changing an existing template
Add new template files
Managing backward compatibility
Challenge - Custom 404 page
Solution - Custom 404 page

Add New Functionality

Finding existing functionality
Add a menu
Change menu output with properties
Style new menu with CSS
Challenge - Conditional widgetized area
Solution - Conditional widgetized area

Wrapping Up

Shiny new web fonts
Adding a screenshot
Migrating files to your live site

Conclusion

Next steps