Ben
Ben is a lifelong Nintendo fan who likes to build websites, and make video games. He buys way too much Lego.
WordPress and Games
I was asked recently how to get into WordPress themeing and so I thought I would answer publicly. Perhaps my thoughts can help others.
When I first started using WordPress things were much simpler. The default theme was an index.php and a stylesheet. There were no page templates (in fact there were no pages at all) so it was literally just blog posts and archives. In addition WordPress didn’t have custom menus, or headers, or widgets, or the theme customizer – things that themers now use to make themes fully customizable.
Most themes came with a readme.txt explaining how to change different elements of the theme – eg edit line 512 to change of index.php to change the copyright information. Looking back it seems crazy – and whilst the index.php file could be messy – it did mean there was a lot less to learn.
So what would I suggest if someone asked me how to learn to build a theme now?
I am going to assume that the person asking me the question already has knowledge of html, css and some basic PHP – but if not you’ll need to learn that first. You’ll also need a dev environment of some sort – MAMP and XAMPP are good ways to get started.
You’ll notice a lot of my suggestions involve the wordpress.com theme team and using the things they have created. I’ve worked with the team a lot and they know their stuff!
Great post
Is there any drag and drop software to develope wordpress theme?
Hi – you should check out the theme called “Make”. It has a kind of drag and drop system for editing pages.