When you download a HubSpot theme from the HubSpot marketplace, it can be exciting to jump right in and start building pages. This is OK for testing, but when you are ready to actually build your final website, I highly recommend you create a child theme first. In this post, I will explain what a child theme is and the benefits of using one for your business website.
What is a Child Theme in HubSpot?
Child themes are linked versions of an original (also known as “parent”) theme. They allow you to change or expand on the style and/or functionality of a theme without changing the codebase of the original parent theme in any way.
Reasons Why You Should Use a Child Theme for HubSpot Marketplace Themes.
Easier to Adapt, Extend, and Customize the Theme
A child theme uses all of the files and templates in the parent theme from the HubSpot marketplace. It just gives you the added benefit of adding or overriding any existing files. This gives you the ability to customize your theme if you want to in the future but still being able to benefit from theme updates from the HubSpot theme provider.
Prevents a Larger Future Expense to Update Your Site
Imagine building your entire website using a marketplace HubSpot theme you purchased. Then 2 months down the road, you decide to change your branding and quickly need to change some modules to align with your new brand. You hire a HubSpot developer and they give you an estimate that seems more expensive than you had expected. The HubSpot developer then informs you that they have to manually update each individual page on your 50 page website.
If you had used a child theme, the module update could be done once and then apply to all pages using that module referenced by the child theme.
Reasons Why You Should Clone a Theme Instead
Depending on what HubSpot plan you have, there is a limit on the number of child themes you can create. So if you are just planning on having one theme for your website you should be fine. But if you are having multiple micro sites and portals. You may need to create a cloned version of the theme instead. The main downside of this is that you will not benefit from theme updates. You can however update the marketplace theme, and manually move over the changes to your cloned theme. But this will most likely require a developer to know exactly what code elements changed.
Below are the HubSpot child theme limits
- The total number of child themes you can have is based on your subscription:
- Marketing Hub Professional or CMS Hub Professional: five child themes
- Marketing Hub Enterprise or CMS Hub Enterprise: 10 child themes
- HubSpot’s free tools and CMS Hub Starter: one child theme
How To Create a Child Theme in HubSpot
You can read the official documentation on how to create a child theme in HubSpot here.
- In the Design Tools right click on the theme you downloaded from the marketplace and click on Create child theme
- Give it a name so you can easily find it when creating your pages.
- Click save.
- If there is a module or template you want to customize right click on it in the @marketplace folder and select clone to child theme
Conclusion
So as you can see, creating a child theme with HubSpot marketplace themes is very important in preventing more work and expense down the road. It also makes your website pages easier to update and extend to fit your exact needs.
If you have any questions or need help just let me know.
