Thread: Establishing Child Theme Structure After the Fact

Establishing Child Theme Structure After the Fact

So I've worked with WordPress for a few years now, but have only recently understood the critical nature of using a child theme.

I have a multisite WP network on subfolders. I installed Vantage and made some modifications, including directly in a number of the PHP files to rename some of the labels (for example, Businesses became Experts, etc.)

Having done that, I got concerned that I was editing against the parent with no child relationship. So, I copied the entire theme folder and made a new one called vantage-child and activated this one to the site, realizing this is NOT the way to create a child theme. But at the very least, I could reinstall Vantage to it's original pure form and have it on hand.

My question ... having made a number of modifications to some of the core coded files, is there an easy way now to establish this "step-child" back to the parent without losing the changes to the PHP files that have been made? It's more than just style modifications.

Thanks!