WordPress Child Themes

Child Themes are still the best way to customize WordPress based on an excellent theme like http://vpthemes.com/portfolio/terrifico/. By using a child theme, you can personalize your theme without affecting the parent theme and, most importantly, when the parent theme is updated, you don’t have to worry about losing your custom code. Of course you’ll need to make sure to check the Changelog to ensure nothing drastic has been modified.

Here’s the process of incorporating a child theme:

1. Create a unique folder in your wp-content/themes folder. For example, I created a folder named hgctools_terrifico

2. Create a style.css file in that folder with the template below, using your details of course:

/* 
 Theme Name: HGCTools as Child Theme of Terrifico
 Theme URI: http://HGCTools.com
 Description: Healthy Growing Churches -- Tools -- WordPress Theme based on http://vpthemes.com/portfolio/terrifico/
 Author: Dave Phillips
 Author URI: http://teracomp.net
 Template: terrificopro
 Version: 1.0
 */

NOTE: the Template I’m using is the “pro” version; Template: terrificopro. If you’re using the free version, make this line Template: terrifico

3. Create a functions.php file and include this code at the very beginning:

<?php
function terrificopro_child_enqueue_styles() {
    // This is 'terrificopro-style' for the terrifico Pro theme. 
    $parent_style = 'parent-style';

    wp_enqueue_style( $parent_style, 
        get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
   
    wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style',
        get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/style.css',
        array( $parent_style ),
        wp_get_theme()->get('Version')
    );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'terrificopro_child_enqueue_styles' );
?>

4. Activate your new theme in your WordPress admin panel.

Now you can safely update your style.css and functions.php files to make your site your own.