There has been some discussion recently on child theme inclusion in the official theme repository. Child themes are WordPress themes that latch onto a parent theme to do something a little extra, whether it be adding additional styles or functionality.

There are a lot of great child themes out there that do some amazing things on top of frameworks like Thematic and Hybrid, but unfortunately those who don’t look for themes anywhere but WordPress.org will probably never hear about them.

I made a site over at Themelets to list all of the child themes you won’t see on the official theme directory a while back, but nothing will beat the promotion of child themes than on the official WordPress website.

Great designers who support WordPress deserve to have their themes listed in the official theme directory. Not only is it a disservice to them, but also to WordPress users who miss out on these awesome themes, such as these free Thematic child themes from Cozmoslabs.

I think as long as the child themes are designed for parent themes already listed in the WordPress.org theme directory, there shouldn’t be any reason why they’re not included. Be sure to vote if you think they should be included.

I came across Martín Fernández‘s website a while back, and noticed it was using a modified version of the Lightweight theme. Check out what he did with it below.

As you can see, it’s still a light theme with a slightly different color scheme. It really works great to showcase his graphics work.

I got in touch with Martín and he agreed to let me release his modified WordPress theme here on Theme Lab. I converted it to a child theme, so the only things in the file are a stylesheet and a screeenshot. Download it here. Check out the demo here.

Make sure you know how to install a child theme, so you’ll need the Lightweight theme uploaded as well as the Ligher child theme. Activate “Lighter” in your WordPress admin.

I registered the domain themelets.com several months ago (way back in August of last year) in the hopes of one day making a WordPress child theme “portal” of sorts. I started working on it off and on for the past few weeks, and earlier today I finally got it ready.

On the site you can find information on the latest WordPress child theme releases, announcements regarding many popular theme frameworks, along with tutorials and other resources.

Yeah, I know the site is pretty much dominated by Thematic child themes at the moment, but in time maybe we’ll see more variety of child themes spanning across different frameworks.

Don’t worry, I’m not jumping ship from Theme Lab to start posting about new child themes all day. Think of it as a sister blog to complement the content here.

So go on and check out Themelets and let me know what you think in the comments.