Title: Child Theme Best Practice
Last modified: August 21, 2016

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# Child Theme Best Practice

 *  [digitalcam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/digitalcam/)
 * (@digitalcam)
 * [12 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-best-practice/)
 * When I create a child theme of TwentyTwelve and I find that I need to modify 
   files in the category.php and content.php I’m currently copying the entire file
   into my child theme directory and making the mods there.
 * Is there a better way to do it rather than copying ALL the contents of each file.
   I’m concerned that when the theme gets upgraded I’m going have problems if category.
   php and content.php are changed in the upgrade.
 * For example – can I create a category.php in the child’s theme and only put the
   lines of code I need to change in it and then comment them out?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/)
 * (@stephencottontail)
 * [12 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-best-practice/#post-4928366)
 * Unfortunately, no, you can’t do that. You would need to put a complete `category.
   php` in your child theme. When/If Twenty Twelve gets updated in the future, it
   won’t matter what happens to the `category.php` in the parent theme because WordPress
   will only ever use the `category.php` in the child theme.
 *  Thread Starter [digitalcam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/digitalcam/)
 * (@digitalcam)
 * [12 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-best-practice/#post-4928408)
 * stephencottontail – Thank You!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘Child Theme Best Practice’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [child theme](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/child-theme/)
 * [php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/php/)
 * [twenty twelve](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/twenty-twelve/)

 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [digitalcam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/digitalcam/)
 * Last activity: [12 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-best-practice/#post-4928408)
 * Status: not resolved

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