Child theme can be used to change the design of your WordPress blog. Before you can use a child theme, you must first activate the parent theme on your blog. Without the parent theme, the child theme cannot be installed and activated on your WordPress blog. So, this means you must have both the parent theme and child theme. The child theme includes the same features and functionality as the parent theme.  The parent theme acts as the base design for the blog and the child theme adds more complicated designs to the blog theme. WordPress will always access the child theme files. If the child theme file is not available, it will display the parent theme instead.

In the past, when you press the update button below the code box, all the previous customization of the styles will be lost. Users can often damage the WordPress site by entering the wrong code and pressing the update button. With a child theme, users can now make changes to the style of the blog separately without making a single change to the code of the parent theme. The parent theme can serve as a backup for the blog template in case you make mistakes in the coding of the child theme. It will save you a lot of time from building the WordPress theme from scratch.

By using a child theme, you will not lose your customization when a new version of the parent theme is installed. You don’t have to locate all the customizations code and back them up anymore when you use a child theme. It is time consuming to have to go through the entire code to locate each of the customizations and back them up. It is up to you to add more than one child theme to your parent theme to tweak the blog design. Child theme allows you to extend the functionality of certain template file without having to make modifications to other template files.

Child theme is suitable for people who want to frequently add new functionalities or change the styling of their blogs. Child theme can change the entire color scheme and change the positions of the different elements on your blog.  You have the option of creating your own child theme by code it yourself. This option is suitable for professionals who are expert in PHP programming. Any theme in the WordPress directory can be used as a parent theme. You need to have a good knowledge on the parent theme before you can create your own child theme. It will take time for you to understand all the functionality of the parent theme before creating child theme.

Another option is to use a child theme configurator plugin. The child theme configurator plugin can be downloaded for free from the WordPress plugin directory. This option is ideal for people who are looking for an easy way to create the child theme without having to learn any coding language. The child theme configuration plugin allows you to create a child theme from any parent theme that is installed on your WordPress blog. It can be used to duplicate, reset and edit an existing child theme. Theme updates will apply to both the original and duplicate versions of the child theme. The child theme configurator plugin allows you to create unlimited child themes at one low price. You can preview the child theme and make sure that it is exactly as you want before activating it.

Sometimes, the elements that you want to tweak can be changed with a free CSS plugin. For example, if you simply want to replace the logo in your footer, you just need a custom CSS module. If you find it necessary to change the entire CSS stylesheet, the best solution is to download the child theme configurator plugin and use it to create your own custom child theme.