Thread: Child themes and what it is for - Non IT perspective

Child themes and what it is for - Non IT perspective

Hi all,

I've been reading up on child themes and understanding it a fair bit. However, I don't have an IT background and I cant seem to get through some of its uses.

What I understand is this
- A child theme is sort of a duplicate of your core theme
- Hacking should be done on files in the child theme, because if you do it on the core theme, all modifications and changes in the code get overwritten when you upgrade
- Most people create a style.css file in the child theme, and the website loads that css file instead of the one in the core theme.

My question is this..
- I've added just a few lines of extra code into my core css file. I currently have no child theme. I will be creating a child theme and should I copy only those extra code into the style.css file or the whole lot of code from the original css file?
- I've also did some changes to .php files such as index-directory. Should I copy the whole lot of modified code, or leave the core file as it was when upgraded and put changes into the duplicate php file in the child theme?

Pleaseeee help and many thanks!