WordPress theme development beginner's guide - Rachel McCollin

If you?ve been using WordPress to build websites for yourself or clients, you?ve probably reached a point where you need to build your own theme. Being able to build your own themes means you can build beautiful, bespoke websites using WordPress and means you?re not limited to the themes you can download.

WordPress Theme Development Beginner?s Guide will take you through the process of building your first WordPress theme. It will show you how to write the HTML and CSS your theme will be based on, then convert that code to PHP for use in WordPress. Once you?ve done that you?ll learn how to add more features to your theme and make it responsive, accessible and SEO-friendly.

Start by designing your theme using HTML and CSS, then work through the steps to turn this into a fully functioning WordPress theme, including creating template files, adding template tags and PHP to display content, and giving your theme extra goodies like menus, widget areas and more.

Create a gorgeous, responsive and standards-compliant design for your theme using HTML5 and CSS3. Take your HTML and use it to create PHP template files using the WordPress template hierarchy, then add in template tags and the loop to display pages and posts in your theme. Add widget areas, menus and featured images. Learn how to debug your theme and validate it, ensuring it?s standards-compliant and accessible. Find out what steps you need to take to release your theme to the public, and finally learn some extra tips and tricks such as how to enhance your theme for SEO and how to add support for the WordPress theme customizer.

At the end of WordPress Theme Development Beginner?s Guide you?ll have the skills you need to build quality WordPress themes using your own designs. Working through a straightforward worked example, you?ll learn the steps you need to follow to create a theme from scratch.