So You Want To Create WordPress Themes, Huh?

Update: It’s live! It’s happening! Go read How To Create a WordPress Theme and learn how to code up something awesome.

Does that title sound familiar? Over 2 years ago the now defunct WPDesigner.com published a series of posts under that banner, teaching beginners how to create WordPress Themes from scratch.

2 years ago is a long time online: Things have changed.

Starting next week, ThemeShaper will publish a series of daily lessons that will teach you how to create your very own modern WordPress Theme—from scratch—using the latest best practices.

And it won’t be just any old WordPress theme you’ll have in your hands. In a lot of ways it will surpass what’s been done with the popular Thematic Theme Framework. Except, it’ll be a little leaner, a little meaner, and it’ll be all yours.

Here’s the laundry list of features your finished theme will be able to boast of.

  • Search-engine optimization
  • Microformats
  • Localization support for translation
  • Robust dynamic body and post classes
  • Separated Comments and Trackbacks
  • Gravatar support
  • A valid, logical, semantic XHTML structure you can use to build ANY layout
  • Valid CSS
  • A strong typographical foundation
  • Smart default layouts (that we can adapt for later layout generation)
  • 2 widget areas, with NO hard-coded widgets, that “disappear” from the markup when they’re empty.
  • Styling for WordPress Image Classes
  • And pretty much all the typical WordPress stuff

When you’re done you’ll have a complete—and completely powerful—WordPress Theme that you can edit further or build on with a WordPress Child Theme. The choice is yours.

Are you ready?

34 thoughts on “So You Want To Create WordPress Themes, Huh?”

  1. Sounds great. I’m looking forward to this series. It will be nice to have a recent set of lessons that describe the WordPress theme creation processes that I can refer to or refer others to.

  2. Hell yes!

    I’ve built WP themes before but I really want to stay current. I’m sure this series will rock!

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  8. Sounds great Ian,

    I started with Thematic not long ago and am looking forward to gaining more knowledge about how you are creating themes, best practices, etc.

  12. Really looking forward to this – so much of what’s out there is so outdated 8(

  13. This is so needed. Thank you very much. I am sure the community will be very thankful.

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  15. Wow. You really got the nice topic and concept. Small Potato really did a good job and I am sure your posts will be awesome too.

    Looking forward to the series.

  16. Great news – I am really looking forward to this series. I used to follow themeforest blog but they do not update so often – funny they call it day 1, day 2 in the series but each episode takes atleast a couple of weeks to be posted online. I hope you will plan ahead and post them within a short span of time so that readers wont lose interest.
    Good Luck

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  23. WooHoo, sounds fab, i started learning WordPress coding when old “Small Potato” got going with his tuts and have come a long way since then.

    Next week I start teaching another wordpress coding class here in South Africa and your tut series would most definitely be a great resource for myself and my class!

  24. I’m really looking forward to this. I write basic themes in my spare time, but I want to get better and incorporate more of the good bells and whistles

  25. GREAT GREAT GREAT! It’s about time something like this gets published. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for future posts.

  27. Hi…
    Just have to say thank you in antecipation.
    Such an awesome idea, and we all sure it will be really complete, as everything in here 😀

  28. Well, I certainly wouldnt complain about getting some direction here. I think my general css / html is pretty decent, but I am wanting to move towards using WP more and more, especially since the Search Engines seem to salivate over it.

    Thanks.

  30. This will be an awesome series Ian. I have studies 100’s of tutorials on theme making and none have COMPLETELY laid it all out. I know yours will be different and I look forward to it. I’ll bring donuts for the first class.

  31. Pingback: So You Want To Create Wordpress Themes Huh? – The Remix

  32. Thanks so much Ian for showing some Twitter love to Spicy Web Design. Your Thematic theme framework is totally awesome. Thanks for this great contribution of Thematic to the WordPress and the blogging community.

  33. Hi, Ian:

    How about creating or conducting a short 3 week (or similar) on this very blog post, for those of use who need abit of hand holding practicing some of this type of WordPress work.

    Would gladly pay for it, too. Maybe you could set up a one day mini-workshop for $50 and allow a limited number of participants.

    Let me know!

    Cheers,
    Missy

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