When I first reviewed the Key Assignments and Deliverables for Lesson 08, my first reaction was, “I am toast”. Fear and trepidation crept in when I saw HTML, PHP, and CSS, as I can barely type those terms let alone use those tools to develop a theme. Those feelings were further exacerbated when early in Chapter Nine, I read:
All you will need before we get started is the following:
- Your own website design
- The ability to slice and dice your design to turn it into an HTML structure (Krõl, 2019)
Diving in, I found that in the world of WordPress there are tools to help you along the way and there are three paths to theme development.
Building a Theme from Ground Up
While supposedly educational, it can be very time-consuming and ineffective. For me it would require additional learning (coding skills) to develop a theme, let alone keeping it up to date with WordPress and plugin updates. This is definitely not for me with my current skill level.
Building a Theme with a Framework
As alluded to earlier, the WordPress environment is updated frequently, and themes require review and maintenance or updating. Using a framework removes some of that burden as they are frequently updated to keep abreast of those changes.
I reviewed “Gantry,” one of the free theme frameworks, to see what the concept is. It reminded me of a Lego set allowing me to build anything of which I could think. Similar to a set of drag and drop features.
Drawbacks to using a framework are they tend to be large pieces of software, and the learning curve might be steep. In addition. If you want or need to change to a different framework, you will need to learn a new piece of software. Again, not for me. I think the learning curve and “time to market” need for a website would be a negative.
Building a Theme with a Started Theme
Starter themes provide solution that bridges the gap between building from the ground up a using a framework. They are kept current and optimized for WordPress. This provides freedom to design based on a solid backbone. (Krõl, 2019)
For me, this is my optimum solution for creating my own custom theme.
Tools and Requirements
How do we go from nothing, “a blank screen,” to a working basic theme. First, it starts with a design. Creating a wireframe helps define the elements desired in your theme such as:
- Header
- Footer
- Main Column
- Sidebar
These basic elements are the roadmap to turn your concept into code and WordPress has minimal file requirements to create a functioning basic theme. Index.php and style.css are the only two required files and additional files help define the structure and appearance.
- index.php: This serves as main template file for the theme and is the fallback for pages or posts that have no specific template file defined.
- style.css: This contains styling rules for the visual appearance of your site. It contains header information as well as author, version, and description.
- screenshot.png: While not a code file, this provides a visual representation of the theme in the theme selection interface.
- functions.php: This adds custom functionality for features like menus, custom backgrounds, custom widgets as well as other features.
- header.php: This contains HTML for the header section along with elements like site title, navigation menu, and a logo.
- footer.php: This contains HTML for closing, copyright info, widgets, or other footer content.
In the End
As I waded through the assignment you did an excellent job of easing me into basic code editing and theme development. Not trusting myself, I installed Local by Flywheel so I could test my theme and edits before sending to via FTP to my IONOS site.
Hopefully, the end result meets the requirements.
References
Krõl, K. (2019). WordPress 5 Complete. Packt Publishing.