Create Wordpress Theme From Scratch Tutorial

Part I : Getting Started as a WordPress Theme Designer introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you’ll need to be aware of regarding the WordPress theme project you’re ready to embark on. This part also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you’ll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.

Part II A & II B : Template Design and Approach takes a look at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. I explain my own ‘Rapid Design Comping’ technique and give you some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of this part, you’ll have a working XHTML and CSS based ‘comp’ or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Part III : Coding It Up uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from part II and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this part covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of this part, you’ll have a basic, working WordPress theme.

Part IV : Debugging and Validation discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should be employing throughout your theme’s development. It covers the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This part also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons ‘good code goes bad’, especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.

Part V : Your Theme in Action discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme’s CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress’s administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.

Part VI : WordPress Reference covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress’s PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of “The Loop” along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this part is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.

Part VII : Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier parts, and start enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.

Part VIII : AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by taking a look at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. I’ll also give you a complete background on AJAX and when it’s best to use those techniques or skip them. This part also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress theme appear ‘Ajaxy’.

Part IX : Design Tips for Working with WordPress reviews the main tips from the previous parts and covere some key tips for easily implementing today’s coolest CSS tricks into your theme as well as a few final SEO tips that you’ll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.