How to Import WordPress Customizer Settings from Parent to Child Theme

If you ever decided to use a child theme after working with parent theme for a while, you might discover an issue where your customizer settings on parent theme is missing when switching to child theme even though you use child theme of that particular parent theme.

Parent theme customizer settings are not automatically brought over to child theme when switching.

This happened recently to me when working on a client’s site that uses Astra theme. After solely using Astra theme, the site feels the necessity to use Astra child theme to use custom templates.

I created an Astra child theme, uploaded it to the site, and activated it. But I was surprised the site looked off and far different than when Astra parent theme active.

After digging options table, I found out how to import customizer settings from parent to child theme.

1. Log in to your site’s phpmyadmin
2. Go to your {prefix}options table
3. Find records with option_name that has theme_mods in the beginning of its name. You can run this MySQL query from phpmyadmin to look for the records easily

SELECT * FROM `{prefix}_options` WHERE option_name LIKE 'theme_mod%'

Make sure you change the {prefix} with your WordPress database prefix.

4. Copy the option_value of theme_mods_parent. In my case the theme is astra (parent theme’s folder name) so the option_name is theme_mods_astra

5. Paste the value you copy earlier in step 4 to theme_mods_child. In my case it’s astra-child (child theme’s folder name) so the option_name is theme_mods_astra-child

After doing these steps, try refreshing your site homepage. And voila! The customizer settings you made in the parent theme, now should be applied to the child theme as well.

If you encounter any issue or have any feedback, please leave a comment below.