Learning to create a Wordpress theme may seem like a daunting task, and while there are a lot of parts to a theme, there is also a lot of information available to somebody who would like to start. After reading through the guides on this page you should be able to make a decent looking Wordpress theme regardless of your current knowledge.
Step-by-Step Beginner Guides
Stop Tweaking and Create Your Own Wordpress Theme by Web Hosting Search
The Ultimate Wordpress Theme Tutorial by Theme Shaper
How to Create a Wordpress Theme From Scratch by Net Tuts
How to Create Wordpress Themes From Scratch by Eric Martin
Create Wordpress Themes
Build a Newspaper Theme with WP Query and the 960 CSS Framework by Net Tuts
So You Want to Create Wordpress Themes, Huh? by WP Designer
Supplementary Information
While step-by-step guides are great, there will be some more information that you need if you want to stray from the basic theme that they are helping you create. Here’s some great information regarding wordpress theme development and css.
Other Useful Wordpress Tutorials
Top 5 Wordpress Navigation Menu Tutorials by WP Hacks
Add Widget-Ready Sidebars to Wordpress Footers by Sueblimely
Add Tabs to Sidebar by Rubiqube
Creating Custom Write Panels in Wordpress
10 Tricks to Make Your Wordpress Theme Stand Out
Have other good resources for beginners learning to make a Wordpress theme? Share them in the comments.
Follow me
Subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe by e-mail
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the idea about creating your own WordPress theme, I am a great coder, I just need some design skills, if I should choose to create a theme.
I know some design basics, but definitely not enough…
These are valuable resources Matt. I redesigned by Wordpress Blog this week. I have little knowledge of web design but it’s amazing what some solid tutorials, some confidence, and a kick in the pants will do. Thanks again for sharing.
RB
More people should learn how to code Wordpress themes. It’s not the easiest thing to do but it’s definitely not the hardest. If you have a little design skill the resources are definitely out there to give you that push.
Nice roundup. Some nice info and great starting points for people who are just getting started designing for Worpress. One of my favorite tutorials are the vidcasts that Chris Coyier posted on CSS-Tricks, they helped me out a lot. http://css-tricks.com/designing-for-wordpress-complete-series-downloads/
Great tutorial. CSS Tricks is an excellent website; Chris Coyier rarely disappoints.
Completely agree! css-tricks videocasts from Chris are excellent. Highly recommended.
Nice stuff! I first started by tearing apart existing themes, GPL-licensed ones from the Wordpress themes directory. I’ve been enjoying it ever since.
Very nice compilation, Thank you for this Matt, Now i can attempt to create a template that i have thinking about in my head.. Thank you!
Creating a WordPress theme is certainly daunting. It’s a task I plan to finish by the end of next week. This will be my first theme to ever be released so fingers crossed!
ThemeShaper’s Thematic theme, as mentioned in the article, is a great barebones theme to start a new theme project. Very nearly the only thing left to do is add your images and backgrounds to the CSS, and voila!
The best change I made was to use Thesis as my base theme, then tweak it a little from there.
Yeah I'm a big fan of Thesis. I'm using it here and couldn't be more pleased.
Thanks for this post!
Isn’t this great!
{ 2 trackbacks }