Copy a file from the parent into your child theme at the same path, edit it, and WordPress loads yours instead.
The templates
Stoat is a small theme. This is all of it:
| File | Draws |
|---|---|
index.php | every listing — blog home, category, tag, author, date, CPT archive, search, 404 |
singular.php | every single post and page |
header.php | <head>, the header bar, the opening of <main> |
footer.php | widgets, copyright, footer menu, </body> |
comments.php | the comment thread and form |
template-parts/branding.php | logo, site title, tagline |
template-parts/archive-header.php | the title and description above a listing |
template-parts/content.php | one row in a listing |
template-parts/content-hero-half.php | the featured first post hero |
There is no single.php, page.php, archive.php, category.php or search.php. WordPress’s template hierarchy falls through to singular.php and index.php, and Stoat lets it — one listing template means a category archive cannot silently drift away from the blog home.
You can still add them. Dropping a category.php into your child theme makes WordPress use it for category archives, exactly as the hierarchy says. That is the cleanest way to make one context different.
A template part
Template parts are loaded with get_template_part(), which checks the child theme first. So to change how a listing row looks:
stoat-child/template-parts/content.php
Copy the parent’s version as a starting point and edit from there.
The inc/ files are not templates
inc/template-tags.php, inc/customizer.php and the rest are required by functions.php with an absolute parent path. Copying one into a child theme does nothing. To change a function in there, either:
- use the hook or filter if one exists, or
- redeclare the function in the child’s
functions.php— every function in those files is wrapped inif ( ! function_exists() ), and the child’sfunctions.phploads before the parent’s, so yours wins.
The second is a real, supported escape hatch, and it is why the wrappers are there. It is also a commitment: a redeclared function does not get the parent’s bug fixes.
Adding to a template without copying it
Before copying header.php to add a link, check whether do_action( 'stoat_header_buttons', $context ) will do it — that hook exists precisely so the header does not have to be forked. Same for stoat_entry_flag on a listing row. See hooks and filters.
A copied template is a file you now maintain forever. A hook is not.