Creating WordPress Themes: Introduction
Okay all, one of the most popular sets of postings on my site happens to be the “How to Create a WordPress Template or Theme,” which was actually written a loooong time ago, back when I was using version 2.0. (Or was it 1.5? I can’t even remember!) needless to say, that was back in 2006 – holy cow, almost three years ago! – and although a lot of that stuff still holds true, much of it does not.
We are on the eve of WordPress 2.8 being released – and not only have some significant changes in WordPress happened since 2006, but my understanding of WordPress has gotten significantly better. So I’m finally doing as promised, and I’m starting a new tutorial section on how to create your own WordPress theme from scratch.
Now, keep in mind, this tutorial is how I do it. Others out there probably have different methods on how they do their own work, and that’s great. But I’m hoping this will give you a helpful perspective in getting started. perhaps you’ll continue on with the same methods I have – but maybe you’ll see this as a good starting point and develop your own method. At any rate, this is just the way I do things. By all means, if you have any input that might help others with this, feel free to leave your feedback in the comments.
This new series (and yes, it’s gonna be a series – I gave the basics only before, but I’m always inundated with requests to provide deeper levels of what you can do) will begin with the basics – revamped, of course – and then I’ll proceed to more advanced techniques. I will also be incorporating different techniques that I’ve picked up from other developers that I’ve found to be extremely handy, and I’ll be providing links and credits to that info as I go along. (In many of those cases, I’ll also allow the originators o explain what’s going on, rather than trying to explain it myself, unless I feel my own input should be interjected.)
So I’m just giving you a heads-up: it’s coming. This is just the introduction. I am promising to write at least one post in this series per week, until it’s finished. I will, of course, be starting with the “revamped basics” to give you an overview of the bare minimum steps you should take when starting this project. I’m also going to assume you know NOTHING about WordPress themeing – so please don’t be offended if I speak like I’m teaching my 4-year-old! I’m also going to assume you already have WordPress installed and successfully running on your own site, that you know how to use it, and that you know at least some HTML and CSS (and quite possibly some PHP, but since I’m not a PHP expert myself, I might over-explain some things!)
By the way – from the last few tutorials I provided on this (and similar) things, I had a lot of requests to remove the pagination. I guess a lot of you wanted to print the tutorials so you could read a hard copy – so in this new series, it’s going to be printable – I’m hoping to help the on-screen readability by adding “jump links” when it gets too big. but hopefully that solves the issue. Let me all know what you think as you go along, please. Is that an improvement, or no?
If you have any requests on what you’d like to have covered in this series, please feel free to leave a comment here. I may already be preparing to cover it, but sometimes you all surprise me and come up with some good stuff!
Up Next: The Basics