How to create child theme?

[nanoomarketing]

Howdy, HubSpot Rockstars!

I am very confused with creating child-theme.

Currently I am using Academia Theme by MakeWebBetter.

Here is my Digital Marketing Course in Myanmar webite.

I want to modify some layout and remove some uncessary things. I have cloned the theme as child theme. But my biggest concern here is will my contents disappear from website if I switch my original Academia theme to new child theme?

I am afraid that contents and images will be lost.

Please kindly advise me what I should do next. Thank you.

[evaldas · Accepted solution]

Hi @nanoomarketing !

It really depends on what you will be modifying. 

For example, if it's mostly CSS files then your content should not be affected. However, if you copy any modules (or partials like header/footer) to the child theme and try to use those, then you would need to re-pupulate the content on the page.

What you can do first is clone your page and then swap out the template in the settings, so that the clone is using a template from the child theme:

That way you will see how the changes in your child theme are affecting the page. Once you are satisfied with the changes in the child theme, you can apply the changes to the original page (or replace the original by unpublishing and then update the slug so that the clone would have the original slug).

Note that you don't need to clone the whole parent folder to the child theme, so if you edit a template and it still has the drag and drop area, the modules from the parent theme can be used and it will keep all of your page contents. 

Hope this helps!