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Start your free trialAlan Williams
5,840 PointsHow to set up child theme retrospectively
Hi, I have a live site using a Wordpress theme, but I didn't set up a child theme, how can I do this retrospectively?
2 Answers
Steve Smith
12,955 PointsI would setup a second - staging site separately - something like stage.mywordpresssite.com, load up the vanilla theme that you used to start with, which will become your parent theme, load in a snapshot of your current live database so you're working on a real site with real content, and then create the child theme structure and migrate the customizations from your live site into the child theme of the staged site. When you're happy that everything is working the way you want, you can move the parent/child theme set to the live site and deploy it there.
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest TeacherThe best approach would be to strat from scratch and recreate the theme as a child theme.
Ron Gootman
24,409 PointsHow would you re-install your wordpress site (without loosing all the content)? - to start properly with the 5 minute install, in order to properly set the theme child
Alan Williams
5,840 PointsAlan Williams
5,840 PointsThanks for taking the time to reply, Steve. It will take me a while to get my head around your advice, but I understand and have an idea of what I need to do now.
Steve Smith
12,955 PointsSteve Smith
12,955 PointsIf you've got any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to ask.