Child Themes Coming to WordPress.org

I love child themes. They are so much fun to work with, especially for people who have only enough PHP knowledge to be able to create some sort of nasty Fatal Error. With a child theme you are able to go crazy with your design, knowing that you have the solid functionality that comes with one of the theme frameworks/parent themes.

So I was excited today to see this exchange appear on Twitter:

Ohhhhhhhh! Exciting! I’ve been working with child themes a lot recently, particularly with Thematic and Twenty Ten. It’d be great to be able to put some of my child themes in WordPress.org. In this great post on the future of WP Themes in 2011, Lisa Sabin Wilson says that in 2011 “I think WordPress users will continue to see the growth and innovation with child themes, using one parent theme as the growing standard. This type of situation is a win-win for both developers, and users.”

I totally agree with Lisa on this – as a WordPress user it means I have much more flexibility to make a theme exactly how I want it to be, without my customizations being disappeared whenever an update comes along.

I can’t wait to see Child Theme support in WordPress.org. Hopefully this will mean that we see loads of new themes appearing, giving the WordPress.org directory a new lease on life.

You can check out the thread on the WordPress Development Update Blog.

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