Table of Contents
First of all, not everyone needs a child theme. If you need to modify PHP files of the theme like adding more functions or alter some functions of the theme, then you should use child theme because in each update, the updated version will override all changes you made in PHP, CSS, JS files in fox directory (of course, database stuffs like posts, pages, content, images.. are safe under updates but theme files are not).
Set up child theme
If you’re using multi-site, please skip this section and see the below section for multi-site.
Step 1: Install & Activate Customizer Export/Import plugin
Step 2: Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Export/Import
Step 3: Click “Export” button, you’ll get a file fox-export.dat
Step 4: Downoad sample Fox Child Theme.
Step 5: Install the child theme in Appearance > Themes > Add New as usual, and activate it. At this step, you’ll see all of your settings, content are gone. Your site looks terrible. Don’t worry. We’ll revert all in next stesp.
Step 6: Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Export/Import again
Step 7: Upload file fox-export.dat file then hit “Import” button and wait. After that, all your settings will be restored.
Set up child theme for Multisite
The above process applies to Multisite (Network) too. However, you must apply 7 steps to each site. So here we recap those steps in a better folow for multi-site.
Note: Do not activate your child theme until step 6 below.
Assume your multisite has 2 sites My Blog 1 and My Blog 2. Here’s the steps to set up child theme for My Blog 1:
Step 1: Go to Dashboard > My Sites > Themes > Add New to install the child theme. The sample child theme here, choose “Network Enable”
Step 2: Install Customizer Export/Import plugin
Step 3: Go to My Blog 1 > Plugins to activate the plugin Customizer Export/Import. If you have activate it for all network, you can skip this step
Step 4: Go to My Blog 1 > Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Export/Import
Step 5: Click “Export” button, you’ll get a file fox-export.dat.
Step 6: Activate the child theme in My Blog 1 > Appearance > Themes.
Step 7: Go to My Blog 1 > Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Export/Import again
Step 8: Upload file fox-export.dat file then hit “Import” button and wait. After that, all your settings will be restored.
To set up child theme for My Blog 2, please repeat all above 8 steps. Of course, you skip step 1 because you already did it.