Title: Theme customization
Last modified: July 22, 2020

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# Theme customization

 *  [Shopix Romania](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shopixro/)
 * (@shopixro)
 * [5 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/theme-customization-22/)
 * Hello,
 * We have a theme that we would like to customize. The problem is that customizing
   directly into the theme files will make changes lost on theme updates.
 * Is it possible to override files of parent theme through a child theme? How can
   this be done?
    -  This topic was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/).
      Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not an Developing with WordPress
      topic

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

 *  [Ian Sackofwits](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plantprogrammer/)
 * (@plantprogrammer)
 * [5 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/theme-customization-22/#post-13155596)
 * Hi, shopixro, yes, this is possible, but this depends on what you what aim to
   customize.
 * As congthien states from [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-override-function-in-parent-theme/](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-override-function-in-parent-theme/):
 * >  [C]hild themes are allowed to override templates, not simply arbitrary PHP
   > files.
   > In WordPress, a theme consists of a bunch of PHP files which are used as Templates.
   > You can find a list of those files in the Template Hierarchy.
   > Those specific template files can be overridden with new ones, but unless the
   > parent theme has some special means for you to override other files, then files
   > simply included by the parent as part of a support structure or as libraries
   > for a pagebuilder piece of code cannot simply be overridden in that manner.
 * Depending on the theme, you can override some of the parent theme functions:
   
   [https://mhthemes.com/support/knb/overriding-parent-theme-functions-child-theme-tutorial/](https://mhthemes.com/support/knb/overriding-parent-theme-functions-child-theme-tutorial/)
 *  Thread Starter [Shopix Romania](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shopixro/)
 * (@shopixro)
 * [5 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/theme-customization-22/#post-13163964)
 * Hi Ian,
 * Thanks for the clarification. I was not really sure on what approach we should
   go with.
 * However, it’s always a good practice to have the latest versions installed so
   we’ll just go ahead with what we can customize in child theme because our changes
   are fairly small number and not very significant.
 * Have a nice day!

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

The topic ‘Theme customization’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [child theme](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/child-theme/)
 * [custom](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/custom/)
 * [parent theme](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/parent-theme/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Shopix Romania](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shopixro/)
 * Last activity: [5 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/theme-customization-22/#post-13163964)
 * Status: not resolved

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