Personally, I would not use a child theme unless you really have to. (This comes from ten years of developing and maintaining various WP websites.) I am not horribly familiar with Genesis framework based themes. However, most other themes and theme developers such as Themify.me make it so that you can update CSS in the Custom CSS area under Appearance >> Customize in wp-admin. Where it comes to editing the templates you can also do much of that by creating functions or editing ones that already exist and you can save your functions using a this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/my-custom-functions/ or even save them in a custom plugin. Child themes can be a real headache because if the theme developer updates the code for a template file (i.e. single.php) that you modified in your child theme you will need to make your edits again before updating the parent theme.
The moral of the story is this: for the most part many edits that you would be using a child theme for can be made as described above in the plugin I mentioned or in the customizer found under appearance; however, if you want to use a child theme this guide: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/ will generally provide all you need to know when it comes to creating and maintaining it.
Hope this helps.
Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
Personally, I would not use a child theme unless you really have to.
Oh no. That’s not good advice. Here’s why. When you use a platform like Genesis, you cannot modify the original parent theme. It’s dangerous as you are guaranteed to lose any updates to that theme platform.
Child themes can be a real headache because if the theme developer updates the code for a template file (i.e. single.php) that you modified in your child theme you will need to make your edits again before updating the parent theme.
Sure, but realistically how often does that really occur? If someone likes they can make a duplicate of the original theme with a unique theme slug but they’ll lose all fixes and some of those are security related.
@jdembowski, Interesting… I’ve had this discussion with many devs that are equally as experienced as myself and you are the first one to say my advice is not good. Obviously, if they are editing template files to add custom code they have to create a child theme. However, most of the time I see people making child themes to edit functions.php and/or make simple CSS edits…. in these cases the advice I gave to avoid child themes unless you really need them is actually quite accurate (maybe with the exception of Genesis). Also, I did say I do not know Genesis framework.
Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
You really do not have to @ me or anyone. Seriously, notification abuse can get your account flagged.
SO! I’m talking in the case of MOST USERS here.
However, most of the time I see people making child themes to edit functions.php and/or make simple CSS edits…. in these cases the advice I gave to avoid child themes
If
- you know what you are doing
- you accept ownership and full responsibility of your work
- you do not care at all about support from the theme author
- you know how to make your theme slug unique (it’s not hard)
- you don’t mind running around holding scissors
- you fly on the high trapeze without a safety net
Then sure, modify the original theme. (I added those last two as “why not?”) If you’re good with that then great, fly free and have fun.
For everyone else, please recommend that they use a child theme. Even for function.php additions or changes, it’s a safer and easier thing for most users to support and take ownership of.
Sorry, I did not realize that tagging people once could be considered notification abuse. That must be a newer rule here. I will severely limit it from now on. In fact, I have a couple different accounts here on the forum. One is for my business the other is this one.
Where it comes to the discussion. I did not say to edit the original theme file. I said to use a plugin for functions.php additions or edits…. or create your own plugin.
Child themes are the way to go for well supported themes.
You create a minimal child theme to start, get the child to take over, and then only make your changes there. Meanwhile, the creator can change the parent theme giving you the best of both worlds.
You don’t need to worry with extra plugins for changes that could be done in the functions file and you don’t need to worry about losing changes to your CSS files. And any changes to the pages themselves don’t get clobbered during an update. I’m too old to remember the changes I’ve made to themes to deal with any other methods.
Actually, that’s the whole point of the plugin I suggested. Enough users did not have the technical skill to create child themes or plugins on their own…. but needed to add custom functions for one thing or another. It allows you to add custom functions and leave the theme alone.
Not a bad idea and I’ve had a few problems with child themes over the years myself but those problems were all my fault.
I’ve also spent the last week fighting problems with two different ‘updated’ plugins where features quit working. I’m still cleaning up the messes. So I’m not ‘real happy’ with plugins right now.
The custom functions plugin i suggested actually is one of the few that I have never had any issues with in the three years since I found it! It is well supported and any time i’ve had a problem it was not related to the plugin but one of the functions I added using the plugin. Once in a while I have had issues with my functions not being recognized but that’s simply because I forgot to turn the on/off toggle to on.. so thats user miss use!
