The best way to test any inactive theme is to use the “live preview” feature to view it. Live preview runs with temporary settings, so any fatal errors will be thrown, but they will not cause WordPress to become inaccessible.
I go into detail about how child themes work here: http://www.childthemeconfigurator.com/how-child-themes-work/
The redux is that a child theme inherits the parent themes functions and styles because WordPress loads both the child theme and parent theme functions.php file. If the parent theme is written correctly, this allows the child theme to “override” the parent theme functions and to load its own styles.
In addition each theme (and child theme) stores its own version of the “theme mods” ( customizer settings ), so that things like menus, widgets, header image and other properties can be set specific to the child theme.
Cheers @lilaeamedia
I don’t know the details in your response I will check out your link.
Thanks
BJ
In short, when the parent theme is updated, the child theme automatically inherits the changes.
