October 5, 2021 . 3 MIN READ
If you are working with WordPress, it is always best practice to use child themes if you want to make any changes to your theme. This post explains how to use multiple child themes with WordPress Multisite.
What is a child theme you ask? A child theme is essentially a theme which inherits the functions and look and feel of a “parent theme”. Any changes you make to the child theme do not affect the parent theme, but you still maintain the functions of the parent theme.
You can think of it like a hierarchy. The parent and child themes have the same functionality as the parent, but the child can have its own specialised functions as well.
This is useful because any changes you make are not potentially overwritten when an update to the parent theme is released by the developers.
If you are using WordPress Multisite, you can of course use the same child theme for some or all of your collection of sites on your multisite network.
I assume you already know how to use Multisite if you have found this blog post, but if you aren’t familiar, check out the official WordPress documentation on how to create a network.
But what if you want to make specific theme changes to individual sites within your Multisite network, but still use your child themes (without those changes affecting your other sites using the same child theme)?
This post explains how you can easily make copies of a child theme, make any necessary changes in the new copy of the child theme, and then use the copy as the active theme on your site.
There are pros and cons of using this method to create multiple child themes. Although it is extremely easy to make a copy of a child theme, any changes that you make in one copy won’t affect the other copies. This can be a pro or a con depending on your requirements.
If you want to make a change to a theme for a couple of sites on your Multisite network, you have two options.
You can either make the same code changes multiple times on each child theme (not efficient and annoying to maintain), or you can make all the changes in one child theme and then make a copy of it and activate on your desired sites.
You may be asking yourself – can you make a child theme of a child theme? The reason we do it like this is because it is not really possible to make a child theme of a child theme (“grandchild” theme).
Let’s say you are using a child theme on your multisite network called “Hello Elementor Child“. This is the default name of the child theme for the Hello Elementor theme.
The child theme will be located in your /wp-content/themes directory.
All you need to do is make a full copy of the directory and place it in the same directory, but with a different directory name.
Now open the newly created directory and modify the style.css file replacing the name of the theme with your desired name.
Go back into your WordPress Multisite Network Admin area Themes list. You may need to Network Enable the new theme so that it is visible to your individual sites.
Now you can activate the newly created child theme on your individual site.
Any changes you make within this new theme will only affect the one site (and another others that you activate with the same copy of the child theme).
Of course, any changes you make to the ORIGINAL child theme will not be reflected in your newly created copy of the child theme.
I hope this quick and easy tutorial helps someone out, if you enjoyed it please feel free to let me know by leaving a comment below or share with others who may need it. Or if you have a more efficient way of achieving the above result, let us know in the comments too!
You can also send me a message if you have any questions using the contact form on my homepage.
Resource: https://www.dancomley.com/multiple-child-themes-with-wordpress-multisite/
Read more: https://vickyteinaki.com/blog/theming-wordpress-multisite/
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/01/complete-guide-wordpress-multisite/#a-themes
