Dress up your WordPress with Child Themes

You’ve bought a fancy new WordPress theme, but now your site looks like everyone else’s. So how do you make that fancy new theme look a little bit more… you? You create a child theme. Child themes build on top of the original theme, letting you change as much… or as little… as you want, while keeping all of the snazzy theme options and functionality built in to the parent theme.

While the main focus of this discussion will be on changing the styles and CSS, we will look at minor PHP customizations. We’ll compare some of the various theme frameworks and setups, from customizing a style-free Sandbox, to a more elaborate theme with Thematic and Modularity, to the action hooks necessary to customize Thesis.

This is an intermediate-level talk aimed at attendees with some CSS knowledge, or who know how to use Google to create CSS.

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About Laurie

Laurie M. Rauch believes that great user experiences start at the first line of code. Laurie is the owner and chief code nerd of the Code Diva and WP Divas, where she provides WordPress customizations and coaching and specializes in developing sites for WordPress using standards-compliant HTML and CSS. She is also part of the support team for Graph Paper Press, an associate designer for E.Webscapes, and has taught web page design at Seneca College. Follow @lauriemrauch on Twitter.