Build(ing) child themes for Kuorinka

Kuorinka theme is build also child themes in mind. You’d say it’s child theme friendly. Justin Tadlock have build Stargazer and Saga themes with the same goal in mind. There are some differences but the basic idea is the same. Creating child themes should be easy, fun and would not require lot’s of code skills.

Understanding Kuorinka

Kuorinka theme is accessibility-ready and translation-ready, have right to left support and includes Schema.org microdata. Try your best that child theme do not break those things.

If you keep your child theme simple all you have to worry about is color contrast. You can test your colors using tool like color contrast by Joe Dolson.

Child themes pack

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New color schemes can be created in less than an hour because in parent theme style.css I have Child theme friendly zone. I just copied the child theme friendly zone CSS in the child theme style.css and searched and replaced all the colors I wanted. Note that parent theme styles are loaded automatically so there is no need to use @import rule. Konstantin Kovshenin has nice article about the subject even if I done it little bit differently.

I have plans the build several commercial child themes and they are available in Kuorinka Child theme pack.

Kuorinka Child Dev

To make my own and other job even more easier I have created an example child theme for Kuorinka. It includes guidelines how child theme should be created and what can be done via child theme.

In functions.php there are several things you can do but only one required.

functions.php file

1. It’s required to load child theme text domain.
2. You can overwrite parent theme’s background color and image.
3. You can overwrite parent theme’s header text color and register new header images.
4. You can dequeue parent theme’s fonts if you want to enqueue new fonts.

If you use new fonts in child theme remember to enqueue fonts in admin header page with hook admin_print_styles-appearance_page_custom-header and in editor using add_editor_style function. ThemeShaper have great tutorial how to add Google fonts to WordPress themes.

css folder

If you are using new fonts and styles in child theme, you need to add one file in css folder.

1. editor-style.css file which is automatically loaded in the editor to reflect child theme styles. Basic @import rule here is fine.

languages folder

All child themes should have a languages/theme-slug.pot file. Even if your theme doesn’t add new strings, the style.css headers should be translatable.

If you’re unfamiliar with this process, here are tutorials for creating a POT file:

• Creating pot files
• Language packs
• Create pot file using Grunt task

style.css file

First update header info in style.css file.

Then if you want to create new color scheme for Kuorinka there is Child theme friendly zone in parent theme. Just copy and paste the CSS rules in the child theme style.css and search and replace all the colors you want to change.

Other files

Remember to update screenshot.png and readme files, and don’t forget your copyright and license info. After that your child theme is ready to rock!

Get Kuorinka Plus by building awesome child theme for Kuorinka

Get in touch if you want to build child theme for Kuorinka and send it to WordPress.org. As a return I can give you Kuorinka Plus Plugin or any commercial theme for free.

There is already one great child theme in the wild called Geiseric by Thiago Senna. It’s a perfect fit for nature related sites.