Total novice here…create a child template?

  • I am a total novice, so please bear with me! I do not understand .css, .php., etc. but I’m determined to learn! I have been reading the forums and watching tutorials – so far, so good!

    I have installed WordPress and am using the default theme TwentyEleven. I initially just edited the template to start creating my own site (just following what it said to do: “delete this and add your own text!”). I was having trouble understanding how to create the menus, so I wanted to just go back to the default settings. That’s when I discovered I should have never edited the default template in the first place but should be working on a “child” template. This makes perfect sense to me. But I need a little more explanation, please.

    How do I delete the current template, download a new one, and then create the child template? I’m not worried about losing the work I’ve done already, I’ll just start fresh with the child theme.

    Bless all of you people out there that have the patience to help people like me!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • I personally have to read up more on it before I could help you…but have you taken a look at this?
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Child_Themes

    Thread Starter kjgarmon

    (@kjgarmon)

    Thank you, Sage. This link explains exactly what I need to do, but it’s still a little over my head. It says “Create a directory, put a properly formatted style.css file in it, and you have a child theme!” I need to figure that out first…..! I’m also wondering about deleting the current theme that I made the changes to and replacing it with a new default TwentyEleven theme before trying to create the child template.

    Again, thanks!

    Alright, so here is what you do…

    Go into your file explorer and wherever you saved it, find wp-content > Themes
    Create a new folder in there titled TwentyEleven Child (for example)
    Open up some text-editing software (I use Notepad++) and paste this into it:

    /*
Theme Name: Twentyeleven Child
Description: Child theme for the twentyeleven theme
Author: Your name here
Template: twentyeleven
*/
@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

    Save the file in your TwentyEleven Child folder as style.css
    Put any css underneath the block of code or else it wont work.

    Hope that helps!

    Thread Starter kjgarmon

    (@kjgarmon)

    Thank you. I’ve successfully created a child theme!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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