It insulates you from the destructiveness of an update. A child theme references most of the parent theme’s files and creates a safe place for you to make any customizations that you need to make.

Updates are VERY important and often contain security fixes. However, once you make a change to your parent theme files (typically a CSS change or addition to your functions.php file, though many other alterations are possible) those changes will be lost with an update. As long as you don’t edit any of the theme specific files you can update this theme. When you choose a theme for your WordPress site and activate it you’re effectively setting it as your parent theme. Quick Linksīefore we dive into the specific theme types, a quick diversion to discuss parent themes and child themes is needed. We’ve tried to remove themes that have questionable code, but updates and abandonments happen all of the time so – caveat emptor. Each project is unique and one theme does not fit all. Please note that inclusion on this list does not constitute an endorsement for a specific theme or approach. We’ve broken the themes into four major categories – All purpose themes, themes organized by goal, themes organized by industry, and the people making themes. We hope to cover all of the questions that you should be asking yourself and highlight some best-in-class options for the variety of theme types. This post takes a look at theme options from all of the angles. Decisions are often made by users who see an amazing demo site, but don’t ask the important questions like – “Do I have images that look this nice?”, “Do I need all of the sections that I’m seeing?”, or “Is this theme optimized?” The importance of this choice will have repercussions for as long as you own your website. The first thing you think about when you’re starting a new WordPress project.

Bare bones wordpress theme 2017