Child theme! I’m sure you hear this a lot in the WordPress community especially, Divi community but what does it mean? Do you need a child theme? And why? In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about child themes and you can download a FREE blank Divi child theme.

What Is Child Theme?

A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits all the functionality and styling of another theme (called a parent theme). This means, the child theme will have all the features of the parent theme and may also contain extra features. Child themes are used as a safe way to add custom code/features to your website without losing these extra features when you update the parent theme.

For example; you have Divi theme installed on your website and you want to make some modifications like adding a code snippet that gives your website more functionality. You can modify Divi’s own files to add your custom code BUT the problem with that is when ElegantThemes releases an update to Divi and you update the theme, the new version will replace the old version and all your custom code will be gone ?. This is the last thing you want.

For that very reason, WordPress came with the idea of child themes. You create a simple theme as a child of the parent theme and add your custom code to this child theme. This way when the parent theme gets updated, all your code will keep working because it is a part of the child theme, not the parent one.

When You Need a Child Theme

You need a child theme when you want to make some customizations that your parent theme does not have and the only way to get these customizations is via custom code. Still, not all custom code needs a child theme. Usually, you can add custom CSS & Javascript to Divi without a child theme as explained in the next point.

But for PHP code, you will have to use a child theme. Usually, this PHP code is for adding simple functionalities and fixing plugins conflicts.

When You Don’t Need a Child Theme

If Divi theme gives you what you want, you don’t need a child theme. Divi theme in a lot of cases eliminates the need for a child theme. You can build everything using Divi Builder with tons of customizations.

If the customizations you need are some CSS, you don’t need a child theme. Divi already has a place for custom CSS. You can add any custom CSS under Divi -> Theme Options -> Custom CSS.

Divi theme custom CSS

If you need to add custom Javascript or jQuery to your Divi website, you also don’t need a child theme. You can add this code under Divi -> Theme Options -> Integration tab -> here you have 2 places to add Javascript:

  • Add code to the < head > of your blog
  • Add code to the < body > (good for tracking codes such as google analytics).
Divi theme custom Javascript

Download a Free Blank Divi Child Theme

If you want a free child theme for Divi to add some custom code, here is a free blank theme that is ready for you to upload to your website directly.

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