How to Use a WordPress Child Theme and Custom Code

Comment on Stallion WordPress SEO Theme by SEO Dave.

You have a few misunderstandings :-)

There’s nothing special about activating a child theme relative to a parent theme. Click activate as you would for a parent theme (which you already did) and that’s it really. When you activate a child theme WordPress activates the main (parent) theme as well, so in your case when you activated the Stallion Responsive Child Theme, WordPress also activated the parent Stallion Responsive Theme (you are running a parent theme with an extension or child theme).

The benefit of a child theme over a parent theme is if you want to modify code, child themes can be modified (you can make PHP code changes etc…) and when the main parent theme is updated the code changes WON’T be deleted: if you modify a parent themes code and use the WordPress built in update feature your modifications are lost.

You can read about what a child theme is at https://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-child-theme/ To update a child theme you have to use an FTP program, so although I have made updates to the main Stallion parent theme (currently version 8.3.1) I’ve avoided making updates to the child theme (currently version 8.2) because a child theme can not be updated automatically as I’ll describe below.

Before that though.

WordPress has two ways to add new features to a website.

First is via a theme (and child theme) which tends to be visual stuff.

Second are plugins which can be anything from an entire eccommerce addition to a site to something as simple as a Hello Dolly Quote plugin (just shows silly quotes under your Dashboard).

When you have a child theme active this allows for modifying theme features or adding new custom features (via code snippets: you need some basic PHP skills to do this) without loosing those custom features when you update the parent theme.

I guess you haven’t made any custom changes to the Stallion child theme, but if you have they shouldn’t be lost when you update the main Stallion parent theme.

To update the main Stallion Parent theme to the latest version should be a few clicks of the mouse.

This will show all plugins and themes that have updates, you should see an update for Stallion Responsive 8.3.1 (you’ll see this update if the main parent theme or the child theme is active). Simply tick the box next to the update and click the update button. You can do the same for any themes/plugins that aren’t up to date**

** Quick note: for security reasons it’s a very good idea to delete any themes and plugins you don’t use. Like all software WordPress has security vulnerabilities, by uninstalling themes/plugins you don’t use if an unused theme/plugin had a vulnerability the code isn’t on your server to be exploited: yes non-activate themes/plugins can be used to exploit some vulnerabilities.

To add a plugin….

If you’ve found a plugin on the WordPress plugin repository site at https://wordpress.org/plugins/ the easiest way to install it is under your Dashboard: left menu, hover over “Plugins” and click “Add New” and use the search feature to find the plugin and install/activate it. If the plugin gets an update in the future you’ll see it under the updates page.

If you’ve found a plugin not in the repository above, but you can download a zip file (might be a paid for plugin). Under your Dashboard: left menu, hover over “Plugins” and click “Add New” and click the “Upload Plugin” link and upload the zip file from your computer. Be careful with this, always scan the zip file for viruses etc… and do a Google search or two to make sure no one has reported anything wrong with the plugin code***

*** Even the plugins from the WordPress repository can have unwanted code, so always check what you are adding to your site. It’s one of the reasons why almost all plugins I use have been added to the Stallion Responsive theme/child theme, I’ve manually checked the code for possible problems.

Last and the hardest route to add features.
If you are trying to install a code snippet this is where the child theme comes into it’s own. There’s loads of sites with snippets of PHP code that can add features to a site, many of the Stallion Responsive features started out as code snippets found online.

There’s a file in the child theme folder

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/functions-child.php

You can add code snippets to the file functions-child.php (that’s why it’s there for our custom code).

So if you find a code snippet and the site says something like add this code to your functions.php file, add it to the functions-child.php file instead.

Again be careful with adding code this way, be reasonably sure the code is safe. Also be aware if you make a code error it can take your site down. Minor PHP code errors can white screen an entire site.

To avoid a disaster upload your modified /wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/functions-child.php file using an FTP program (like Filezilla: it’s free), don’t use the built in WordPress theme editor. If you break your site via the theme editor you might loose access to the Dashboard pages and will have to login via FTP to fix it.

Basically have a backup copy on the unmodified functions-child.php file on your PC, if your code modification white screens your site or something, upload the unmodified file and it will fix the code error.

David