Can you create child theme for any parent theme?

[TenzinKhando]

Hi,

I recently downloaded a theme. I wanted to rearrange the frontend layout of the store and thought that creating a child theme would be the best approach. I've followed the steps from magento in creating a theme:

http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/frontend-dev-guide/themes/theme-create.html

So far, my folder structure is frontend/ARS/Theme1. Within Theme1, I have files registration.php and theme.xml.

registration.php

<?php
/**
 * Copyright © 2015 Magento. All rights reserved.
 * See COPYING.txt for license details.
 */

\Magento\Framework\Component\ComponentRegistrar::register(
    \Magento\Framework\Component\ComponentRegistrar::THEME,
    'frontend/ARS/Theme1',
    __DIR__
);

theme.xml

<!--
/**
 * Copyright © 2015 Magento. All rights reserved.
 * See COPYING.txt for license details.
 */
-->
<theme xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Config/etc/theme.xsd">
    <title>ARS</title>
    <parent>Sm/market</parent> <!-- frontend/Sm/market -->
</theme>

I noticed within the documentation, that I need to create directories for static folder but what is <area>?

app/design/<area>/<Vendor>/<theme>/
├── web/
│ ├── css/
│ │ ├── source/ 
│ ├── fonts/
│ ├── images/
│ ├── js/

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Tenzin Khando

[Mukesh Tiwari]

Hi @TenzinKhando

<area> can be frontend for the front end design or it can be adminhtml for admin design.

[TenzinKhando]

Hi @Mukesh Tiwari

I see, so for creating a theme would it be needed to create a static directory if the parent theme already has them?