Child themes have always been an important part of the WordPress theme developer’s workflow. With the dawning of FSE (Full Site Editing) and block-based themes, developers are finding that old approaches don’t work anymore, and asking important questions: Where should customization take place? What is this theme.json thing? And, do we even need child themes anymore?
In this talk, I’ll address these questions and propose best practices for how to handle child themes and site customization.