4 Feb 2026 · 5 min read · DelhiHosting Team
If you customise a theme directly, the next update wipes your changes. A child theme solves this — it keeps your edits safe while inheriting the parent’s design.
A child theme is a small theme that loads on top of a parent, inheriting its design but holding your customisations separately. When the parent updates, your changes in the child remain untouched.
Make a new theme folder with a style sheet that references the parent theme, and a functions file that loads the parent’s styles. Activate the child theme — your site looks identical, but you now have a safe place for edits.
Put your CSS tweaks and any template overrides in the child theme. You can copy a parent template into the child and edit the copy. Updates to the parent then never erase your work.
A child theme keeps your customisations safe through parent-theme updates — the correct way to tailor any theme you didn’t build yourself.
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