WordPress Child Theme Generator

Teh replace-tags script script replaces placeholder tags in key files to quickly scaffold a new WordPress child theme. The scripts/ folder may be deleted after use if desired.

Requirements

• A POSIX-compatible shell (Git Bash, WSL, macOS, Linux).
• perl available in the PATH (used for safe multi-line/global replacements).

Assumptions

This script assumes you are creating a child theme based on the twentytwentyfive parent theme. You'll need to adjust accordingly if using a different parent theme. Additionally, the script assumes you'll be replacing %author-name% with your GitHub username and %text-domain% with the repository name. If this is not the case, you'll need to manually adjust the generated URLs in multiple files. If you want to customize the git provider (e.g. GitLab, Codeberg, private Git server), you'll also need to manually adjust the URLs after running the script.

Usage

Run interactively (Git Bash / WSL / macOS / Linux):

bash scripts/replace-tags.sh

Run from PowerShell using WSL (if WSL is installed):

wsl bash scripts/replace-tags.sh

Notes

• The script prompts for each placeholder and performs in-place replacements in the files:
  • composer.json
  • functions.php
  • style.css
  • theme.json
  • README.md
  • LICENSE
• Leave an input blank to skip replacing that tag.
• The script uses perl to correctly handle special characters and multi-line matches.
• Back up files (or use git) before running if you want an easy revert.

Placeholders

• %text-domain%: The text domain for the theme in kebab case (e.g., my-really-cool-theme).
• %description%: Theme description.
• %author-name%: Author's name.
• %author-email%: Author's email.
• %author-homepage%: Author's homepage URL.
• %year%: Current year (auto-generated).
• %function-name%: Function name derived from text domain (not prompted).
• %class-name%: WordPress standard class name format derived from text domain (not prompted).