Twenty Eleven is a theme that continues to stay at the top of the list in WordPress themes directory. When created, Twenty Eleven child is easily editable. Thanks to templates, this theme does not need so much knowledge to customize as you wish.
Creating Twenty Eleven child theme.
Before you begin to change the codes in a theme, first create a child theme.
First of all, a child theme is needed to avoid the mistakes that can be made on the base theme. But, this also is necessary to save the changes that can be reset in the event of an update. Creating a child theme is really one of the easiest steps in WordPress.
So, how to create a Twenty Eleven child theme?
-
- After installing Twenty Eleven go to: wp-content/themes and create a folder named twentyeleven-child (you can use other name that’s not important).
- Create two files: style.css and functions.php.
- Open style.css and write this code:
Theme Name: Twenty Eleven-child
Version: 1.0
Description: A child theme of Twenty Eleven
Template: twentyeleven
Author: Administrator
*/
@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");
/* Your awesome customization starts here */
- and functions.php:
<?php
/* Write your awesome functions below */
Now you can copy screenshot.png from wp-content/themes/twentyeleven to wp-content/themes/twentyeleven-child, although this is not necessary for the functionality of the theme.
However, to create a child theme easily there is a plugin called Childify Me, by Rocco Aliberti. This plugin is updated continuously, is simple, and functional for all the themes used in WordPress.
To create a child theme through this plugin:
- Activate original theme.
- Click Customize.
- At the bottom click Childify Me.
- Enter a name for your child theme, then click Create.
- Click Preview and Activate, then click Activate & Publish.
Using this plugin is recommended for those who do not want to deal with the code.
We gave an explanation for manually creating a child theme for Twenty Eleven, but for other themes the methods may vary slightly.
Let’s not forget that after updating a theme the changes return to the beginning. So copy the files you want to edit on the child theme.