How to Use Your Child Theme on Another WordPress Site

Child themes allow you to make changes and customize your WordPress theme without ever editing the main theme. This allows you to continue to get theme updates without losing your changes. Recently one of our readers asked us how would he go about using his child theme on his wife’s website. In this article, we will show you how you can use your child theme on another WordPress site.

Getting Started

Child themes are the safest way to customize and make changes to a WordPress theme. Take a look at our how to create a WordPress child theme article to learn more about child themes.

Child themes are completely portable, and you can use it on as many sites as you like. You can download them and install them on another WordPress site. You can even submit your child theme to the WordPress theme directory for others to use if it meets certain standards.

Before moving your child theme, you may want to take a look at our checklist of things you must do before changing your WordPress theme, and how to properly switch WordPress themes. These articles will give you a general idea about theme-specific settings that you need to look out for.

Last but most importantly, make sure that you have complete WordPress backup of both your sites before performing any actions.

Moving a WordPress Child Theme

First thing you need to do is connect to your website using an FTP client and browse to the /wp-content/themes directory. Next, download both your child theme and parent theme folders to your computer.

The next step is to connect to the WordPress site where you want to install your child theme using the FTP client. Browse to the /wp-content/themes/ directory and then upload both child and parent theme folders you downloaded earlier to the new site.

Now login to the admin area of the site where you want to install the child theme and visit Appearance » Themes. You will be able to see both parent and child themes installed there.

Click on the live preview button under the child theme to make sure everything is working as expected. Once you are satisfied, you can safely activate the child theme on your new WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use your child theme on another WordPress site. You may also want to see our hand-picked list of these 43 beautiful free WordPress blog themes.

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