People ask me all the time how I create custom Wordpress themes. The gist of what they are trying to figure out is the actual process in which I use to go from the theme in its origin to a fully functional theme. I’ll try to take it one step at a time, so instead of a very long post, detailing my entire procedure, I’ll do it as a series.
Since it’s pretty darn near impossible to write every piece of php and css from scratch, I started out my first theme using the default Wordpress theme and began to modify it. I did this because I knew functionally everything was stable.
I rewrote how the css appeared in the file, as well as how the php was laid out as well. Then I obliterated the style sheet so that my theme was no longer able to be compared to the original one.
Nowadays when I make themes, I will basically take an existing one of mine (which now I feel is totally my work) and then modify it. If you can believe it, the Blue Zinfandel theme is really my Vertigo theme, but heavily modified.
The first step in any theme design project is to envision what you want your theme to look like. Granted, not all of my themes end up exactly the way they were first drawn up, so I’ve had to be flexible with my refining nature.
For those of you who are interested in creating themes, my first piece of advice is to sit down, draw out a very basic layout of how you want to organize content, and then come up with a color scheme you think you may want to add into it. That’s the best place to start. Call it an architectural blueprint, from which you will build your first Wordpress theme!
