Child Theme Wizard

I wrote a WordPress plugin that makes it super easy to create a Child Theme from any of the installed themes on your instance. It creates a simple starting point without the need to futz with an FTP server or other web interface, all from within the WordPress admin interface.

What’s more, it’s extremely simple to use, easy to pick up and has literally no options other than the basic essentials. It even has a little wizard icon as a logo.

I called it Child Theme Wizard.

Usage

Once installed and activated, head over to Tools – Child Theme Wizard and you’ll see a dialogue like this. Fill out the fields (or at least the title), select “Create Child Theme” and the Wizard goes to work.

Child Theme Wizard in action

Once it’s done, and if all went well, you’ll see a message suggesting that your Child Theme was successfully created and that you can now activate and customise it to your heart’s content. Huzza!

If all goes well

In the unlikely event that things didn’t go so well, you’ll get an error message like this one. Could the that the directory already exists, or that you don’t have write permissions on the server, or perhaps something completely unrelated. Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen…

In case something went wrong

Your New Child Theme

Every new Child Theme comes ready for activation, with the minimum set of files needed to pull data from the Parent Theme and no other changes. Therefore, your child theme looks exactly like the parent theme, except that you can now start writing code in either functions.php, or add your own CSS in styles.css. It’s essentially like a blank canvas, ready for your World Wide Paint Brush.

Funky Thumbnail included

Every (child) theme should have a thumbnail. I’ve included this blue generic thing, but it’s a placeholder. Feel free to replace it with something else (functionality for which is currently not included, as it would make the plugin a lot more complex – and there are already so many overcomplicated Child Theme Plugins on the WordPress repository that do that).

Where do I get it?

Download the plugin directly from within WordPress (Plugins – Add New, then search for Child Theme Wizard). Or…

Changelog

When there’s an update to the plugin, I’ll write a post about it. Here’s a list of all posts related to this plugin:

Having trouble?