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WordPress How to Make a Website with WordPress WordPress Widgets and Custom Menus Custom Menus in WordPress

karennh
karennh
4,925 Points
Posted by karennh
karennh
4,925 Points

Child themes in WordPress - critical theme update and change not made in child

If there is a file that has some issue and the creator (or even WordPress) updates that file, shouldn't I make that same fix to the file in my child theme? If so, how do I know I should do that. And what changes to make?

2 Answers

karennh
karennh
4,925 Points
karennh
karennh
4,925 Points

Hi Artemis,

Thanks for your reply.

The class here talked about modifying header.php and footer php and that got me thinking. This sounds like a headache to have to monitor changes and make them in my version. I'm wondering how people deal with this in the real world.

I have seen something about hooks so perhaps that is a better way to go. Hopefully, those are discussed here.

Karen

Artemis Roditi
Artemis Roditi
1,645 Points
Artemis Roditi
Artemis Roditi
1,645 Points

Hello Karennh,

Have you made structural changes to your theme beyond just CSS and functions modifications? Did you modify php template files like the navigation.php or footer.php in your child theme? If yes, then it depends on the update and your modifications. If not though, you should not worry. The .php files are loaded from the parent theme (which should be available but not activated in "Administration Panels > Appearance > Themes"). So, if an update is needed, you only have to update the parent theme. That's the main purpose of using child themes: to be able to update the parent theme without losing your style modifications.

You can read more about it on wordpress codex and here

I hope this helps.