Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress How to Make a Website with WordPress Customizing WordPress Themes How to Make Child Themes

Jack Dean
Jack Dean
5,772 Points
Posted by Jack Dean
Jack Dean
5,772 Points

Will parent them updates still affect child theme?

If the child theme inherits the parent theme's style.css file, won't the child theme still be affected if the parent theme's style.css file is updated? Meaning you could still end up breaking your child theme despite retaining all your customisations?

Also, if all you import into the child theme directory is the parent's style.css file, how does the child theme inherit all the rest of the php files and such?

1 Answer

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points
Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

The child theme is not changed when you update the parent theme. However the parent themes new changes could cause the site to break. Imagine if the author changed a class name of something you styled in your child theme. Then in that case there could be issues. That would be bad practice on the author to do that but it could happen. You should be careful when updating and test on a staging environment always just in case.