Using a starter theme vs starter theme with child theme

Question

I have been using quark a lot which is a starter theme.

I have been using a child theme with quark for a few reasons:

• Clear separation of code
• Ability to easily update quark on theme updates

As I have become more in tune with the theme and wordpress, I am trying to reduce the load and resources to ensure speed and efficiency.

I am now debating the use of a child theme - Mainly because I know a child theme already adds additional resources

e.g. it requires 2 x style.css (parent and child) and sometimes, overwriting styles is cumbersome and creates extra code which wouldn't be required by using starter theme in standalone - I could just delete the code.

The same goes for functions.php - quark loads 2 x google fonts - if i dont use them and load my own google fonts, i end up loading resources that are superfluous.

BUT, using a starter theme disables the ability to easily update to the latest theme when a new version is released...

So... I guess I want to know if I am correct - is this just the "rub of the green" and effectively I have to sum up whether I want to deal with a few extra resources versus the inability to auto-update my theme?

Or am I missing some unique concept to each method?

Answer 1

Definitely use a child theme!

Quark was well designed with child themes in mind.

These are tips, how to deal with your concerns about styles and functions.php files:

"e.g. it requires 2 x style.css (parent and child) and sometimes, overwriting styles is cumbersome and creates extra code which wouldn't be required by using starter theme in standalone."

Keep styles.css empty in a child theme. Enqueue parent styles.css in child's functions.php with the following code:

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'wpse_child_theme_scripts' );
function wpse_child_theme_scripts() {
    wp_enqueue_style( 'parent-theme-css', get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css' );
}

Use Customize -> Additional CSS to override parent's styles and to add new CSS rules.

"The same goes for functions.php - quark loads 2 x google fonts - if i dont use them and load my own google fonts, i end up loading resources that are superfluous."

As I mentioned before, Quark, being well designed, allows overriding parent theme functions in your child theme. To load google fonts on your own, put the following code in child's functions.php:

function quark_fonts_url() {
   // your code to load fonts goes here...
}

Parent's function quark_fonts_url is a pluggable function, so it will be replaced by your function, declared in child's functions.php. Only your fonts will be loaded.

There are many pluggable functions in Quark. If you want to change their functionality, you can override them in your child theme.

With the child theme approach, being immune to loss of your modifications upon Quark updates, you gain very high level of flexibility.

Answer 2

In general I would say that a child theme is an outdated concept. The major problem with it is not so much performance, but more an issue with the developers of parent themes that do not keep backward compatibility to ensure that whatever mods which were done with child themes will actually keep working, and too many times upgrade of a parent theme result in breakage.

With GIT being easily available and almost everybody uses it, I do not find any reason to limit yourself to writing child themes as it is as easy to just have a GIT with the parent theme, branch it for your development, and update it with new versions of the parent theme and merge into the development branch.

I would not put too much emphasize on performance, as for most sites it is an irrelevance (most just don't get enough traffic for performance to actually matter) but will decide on such matters based on the client and use of the theme (non technical clients will probably prefer child themes to be able to upgrade them with ease when there are new versions, more technical clients are likely to be more aware of the pitfuls and have someone that can actually use git around).