Creating a BirdPress Child Theme

For websites that need specialized functionality and customization to the theme, we recommend creating a child theme based off of BirdPress. The Tech Team has provided a starter child theme template that can be downloaded from a bitbucket repo (special access required).

The child theme has the appropriate folder set up to mimic BirdPress and some suggested starter files. Once downloaded, any functions, scripts or styles can be changed to the developer’s preference. All other file overrides would need to be a one-one match to the BirdPress theme.

The child theme set up is as follows:

• All page templates are in the child theme root folder
• All template parts are in the /parts folder
• All functions from functions.php are included from files in the functions folder (this does not need to be a one-one customization, it is just a suggestion)
• Javascript files are in the /scripts folder (this can be changed to the developer’s preference)
• Styles are in the /styles folder where style.css lives. In the main BirdPress theme, we compile this file from styles in the /scss folder (this can be changed to the developer’s preference)
• The main template style.css in the root of the child theme only has the theme information on it. The only required part of this file is Template: birdpress3 which links the child theme to the parent BirdPress theme.

For non-theme customizations, you can also extend BirdPress by adding plugins with custom functionality.