WordPress theming for beginners, an introduction. WordPress has become the most popular blogging platform for a while now, and you’re probably using it if you write on a self-hosted blog. One of the key reasons of WordPress success is its templating system. In fact, thousands of free WordPress themes are available on the Internet. However, if you want a truly unique theme, you’ll need to create your own. This article will give you a basic understanding of a WordPress theme’s structure. The basics WordPress themes are the standard layout system that define your blog’s appearance.
WordPress page structure Most of the time, a WordPress page is composed of the header, the sidebar, the content and the footer. Template files The above chart shows what files are used depending on the page you are using. The Loop In WordPress, the loop is a set of functions used to display your posts and everything related to the posts (title, tags, author, categories,…). Template Tags Template tags are small PHP snippets that are used to display info on the blog. WYSISYG Wordpress Theme Generators.
Share I’ll go out on a limb and say WordPress is one of the finest software applications to come out this millennium. Its put the power of the press and the ability to reach thousands (or millions) of people in the hands of the people live never before. People from every walks of life can create powerful websites without needing to know a shred of code and it’s all open source. That said, for people who want to dig deeper and learn a little bit more about how to create their own themes, the process can be incredibly daunting. In took me ten posts just to cover the subject a few months back on this post robbie williams the ego has landed .
What WordPress truly needs is a WYSIWYG editor to really empower people to get creative with their blogs! It just so happens that are a few projects in this space already…. ThemeDreamer is plug-in extension for DreamWeaver that allows users to open WordPress themes in the DreamWeaver environment and edit them as if they were normal XHTML.
How I Learned To Build Wordpress Themes. Picture your finished custom wordpress theme live on your server, completely unique and fresh. By the time you have finished reading the resources in this post that scenario will be a reality. People love custom themes, they make a blog come to life with a personality of its own. It’s no secret that they’ll reward it you for it through links, subscriptions and bookmarks. Theme Design Lessons How To Create A WordPress Theme From Scratch Good walk through in detail on creation of themes. The 5 Minute Theme Fast way of making simple a simple wp theme. Turn Any Web Template Into a Theme This flash tutorial shows how to turn any web page into a wordpress theme.
Mocking Up a Theme In Photoshop A bit of self promotion! 16 Lessons On Theme Creation Covers all bases in detail, really comprehensive lessons on all aspects of WordPress theme creation from header to footer! 4 Step Theme Design Guide Basic Intoduction To Themes Good post breaking down how the themes work for those new to WordPress. Inspiration. AWESOME: ThemeSwitcher in Web Design, Fantastic Examples and Tutorials. Have you ever visited a site that sells themes and allows you to easily switch between them within a fraction of a second? Most of have, and we can agree that this makes switching between these much quicker and easier. The cool thing about ThemeSwitchers is that any website with a similar function (i.e. switching between color swatches from an online color app) can utilize them through the power of jQuery.
Below you will experience a beautiful showcase of websites that use ThemeSwitchers and we also provide you with great tutorials and screen casts on how to develop your own and fully integrate it with your website. Examples of Great ThemeSwitchers HutchHouse The HutchHouse theme switcher is located at the top right hand side of your screen.
WooThemes Sites such as WooThemes are infamous for knowing how to encourage the user to switch between themes and choose various options from a list. Stephan Velthuys Velthy.net has a simple color switcher at the top right hand corner. Marius Roosendaal. Designing and Coding Wordpress Themes from Scratch | WP Switch. Imagine it’s 2am and you just hit “activate” on your most anticipated WordPress theme to date. Finally, after weeks of hard work you now get to showoff that friggin’ sweet WordPress theme you designed and coded from scratch. In this kickass WordPress article there are 24 total resources that will show you how to design and code WordPress themes from scratch. This includes 9 design and coding tutorials, 12 Photoshop mockups, 2 WordPress e-books, and even a developers “Cheat Sheet”.
WordPress Design and Theme Coding: 9 In-depth Tutorials 1. The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial In only 11 individual lessons this WordPress Theme Tutorial is going to show you how to build a powerful, up-to-date, WordPress Theme from scratch. 2. In this tutorial, you will learn the basics of how WordPress theme works and see how to convert a static HTML template into a theme. 3. A 7 part video tutorial series on developing WordPress Themes. 4. A 3 part tutorial series. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Premium Wordpress Theme Design Part 1 – The Photoshop Mock Up. Making a premium WordPress theme from scratch is an essential skill for designers to learn and will become increasingly important as WordPress continues to become the web publishing tool of choice.
In this two part tutorial will we cover how to make premium WordPress themes happen. Part 1, covered below, shows how the photoshop mock up is created, and in Part 2 we’ll outline how to turn the psd into HTML/CSS and wordpress theme files. I’m Alvaro Guzman and in part 1 I’ll show you how to design a modern web interface from scratch using Photoshop and stock pictures. You can download the finished psd file at the end of this tutorial. Firstly let’s have a look at the finished psd mock up: The Finished Mock Up Step 1 Let’s get started, first create a new blank document and draw some guides to delimite your design, 960px width is just fine, then increase your canvas size to see how it looks on wider resolutions, maybe to 1200-1260px. Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9 Step 10 Step 11. Premium Wordpress Theme Design – Part 2 – HTML + CSS + Wordpress Theme Files.
Hi, I’m Alvaro Guzman and this is the second part of the premium wordpress theme tutorial continued from Part 1. This time you’ll learn how to slice the design and convert it into XHTML + CSS, then I’ll show you how to use the css files to mock-up a WordPress template. This isn’t a basic tutorial, if you’re a newbie, maybe you should read some basic HTML+CSS tutorials, and undestand the basics of CSS tags and WordPress features and structure. If you’re a programmer, you must have some basic knowledge about phothoshop, layers, slicing and obviously WordPress. Anyway, if you’re an intermediate – advanced level webdesigner, I’m sure you’ll find this useful. Step 1 – Let’s begin Open the .psd file. First, hide all the layers containing text, links or content images. A good practice is start coding a small framework on a blank .html file and then apply a single stylesheet to it, after that, you can move forward and turns these files into a full WordPress theme.
Step 2 – The main background. Premium Wordpress Theme Design Part1. Premium Wordpress Theme Design Part3. Premium Wordpress Theme Design Part2. Lessons. Wicked Wordpress Web Design.