Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme

January 1, 2007

To kick off my blog for 2007, I am going to write a series of posts for people wanting to know how to create a Wordpress theme. Here’s some resources I’ve found useful for putting one together:

  • Graphic design:
    • Useful to have: Photoshop/Fireworks or the like to create your graphics
    • For inspiration: sites like Netdiver, Design Melt Down, CSS Beauty, Unmatched Style etc can help sometimes.
    • Color scheme ideas: Colorschemer, Daily Color Scheme and Flickr (photos are a brilliant source for color combinations). Flip through your favourite magazines (I love looking through my How Magazines and books for ideas. Look at how you’ve designed your house/bedroom/office - what color combinations do you like?
    • Fonts: DaFont for free fonts and Linotype for purchasing professional fonts.
    • Images: SXC for free photos and iStockPhoto for inexpensive illustrations and photos.
  • XHTML/CSS templating:
  • Understanding how Wordpress themes are put together. I can’t emphasise enough how important the Wordpress manual is. Don’t miss the Stepping into templates information.
  • Understanding “the loop” and various Wordpress tags.
  • Knowing when and how to install plugins. WP-Plugins.net has many plugins, but doing a Google or delicious search for “Wordpress plugin” and then the type of plugin you’re wanting will help you find many others.
  • Knowing at least a little bit of PHP if you don’t want to feel so scared by Wordpress tags, the loop, plugins and your templates. There’s some tutorials on W3Schools which can help.

Have you found any others which you find essential?

See also
Comments

  1. Thanks! They really are useful! :)

    — Sarit, January 1, 2007

  2. Adobe’s new Kuler tool is another great colour schemer resource.

    — Matthew Pennell, January 2, 2007

  3. The new FireBug is the most awesome tool for coding CSS for templated systems like Wordpress,

    http://www.getfirebug.com/

    It is an essential tool for tweaking CSS and debugging JavaScript.

    — Tim Bednar, January 2, 2007

  4. I’ve been doing a series of theme reviews looking for bugs in the wordpress.com installed themes.

    My help page is a pretty good resource for some very common bugs people have in a lot of their themes.

    http://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/wordpress-theme-reviews/help

    — engtech, January 2, 2007

  5. Hey there,

    I found your article from the reference in Darren Rowse article and wanted to tell you that this information will definately be very useful for me in the future. I want to learn how to create custom wordpress themes. I have wanted to do this for some time now, and some how it always gets put to the side. I will be saving this article and reading it again when I have some time set aside to work on this. Thanks for the great info.

    - Garry

    — Garry Conn, January 2, 2007

  6. Another great resource. I’ll definitely create my first custom theme this year. Thanks!

    — jhay, January 2, 2007

  7. This is an awesome!

    Thanks for summing it all up :-)

    Cheers!
    Alpesh

    — Alpesh Nakar, January 2, 2007

  8. You’re welcome :)

    — rachelcunliffe, January 2, 2007

  9. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme Rachel has put together a list of resources for WordPress theme development. It won’t teach you the basics of design, but it does point you to some good places to readup. Useful, when you are just starting out and don’t know where to take that first step. (No Ratings Yet)  Loading … [...]

    — Weblog Tools Collection » Blog Archive » Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme, January 2, 2007

  10. Thanks Matthew for the Kuler tool — hadn’t seen that before.

    Tim, I’ve tried using Firebug but I guess I’m so used to using the CSS editor part of the Web Developer Toolbar that I didn’t find it so essential. But, others swear by it.

    engtech, your theme review looks so thorough and should be a useful guide to people looking at default themes.

    — rachelcunliffe, January 2, 2007

  11. [...] [...]

    — 24th Floor - Technology, Web, Tips, Tutorials, Jokes and my life. » Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme, January 2, 2007

  12. Open Design templates are also extremely useful. Sites like http://opendesigns.org/ http://openwebdesign.org/ http://andreasviklund.com/templates/ and http://www.freetemplatesproviders.com/ should definitely be on the list for both inspiration and standards-compliancy educational purposes…..

    — Sterne, January 2, 2007

  13. Very Resourceful post. Great!

    — sandeep, January 2, 2007

  14. what a reference

    — saif, January 2, 2007

  15. You could also work with open formats (png and svg) using free software as The Gimp and Inkscape. Instead of Adobe’s.

    — Tassoman, January 2, 2007

  16. [...] Rachel from cre8d design has put together a list of an useful resource for someone who want to create wordpress themes. Go to useful resource for wordpres theme development page. [...]

    — Useful Resources For Creating Wordpress Theme » In My Pad, January 3, 2007

  17. thank you, appreciate the work you put into providing this information to the community. also, another handy graphic editor for windows users is paint.net, especially handy for creating simple lineart

    — kevh, January 3, 2007

  18. Hi, thanks for the links! A great tool for extracting color schemes from pictures can be found here:

    http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

    Greetings,
    Ingo

    — Ingo, January 3, 2007

  19. [...] Some great tips for designing your on WordPress theme. I’d like to add that The GIMP is a great image manipulator, and the price is right. [...]

    — serialdeviant.org(y) » Theming and design, January 3, 2007

  20. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: wordpress webdesign Design theme tips reference CSS) [...]

    — links for 2007-01-03 - Squitix.de, January 3, 2007

  21. I really liked the Dreamweaver Plugin for creating wordpress templates. A lot of plugin buttons and standart function calls selected as buttons for easy navigation.
    Usefull thing for creating Wordpress Theme on existing design layout, which is already converted to html/css and images.

    — vestel, January 3, 2007

  22. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme (tags: theme Wordpress tutorial design) [...]

    — links for 2007-01-03 at Webmercial.dk, January 3, 2007

  23. Good post!

    — jack, January 3, 2007

  24. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme [...]

    — Freakitude Technology Blog » Blog Archive » Hot Picks - January 03, 2007, January 3, 2007

  25. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: design webdesign wordpress reference) Like this Article? Subscribe [...]

    — Almost, Not Yet - » Blog Archives » links for 2007-01-03, January 3, 2007

  26. [...] En mis continuos quebraderos de cabeza por crear un tema para mi web me he encontrado con este artículo, muy interesante, que espero os sea de utilidad, a ver si por mi parte también le saco provecho. [...]

    — Terrón Org » Blog Archive » Recursos útiles para crear temas en WordPress, January 3, 2007

  27. [...] A quick morning post and then off the web for most of the day: Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0. This site and my other blog are both WordPress-based. It’s a great system. I changed the theme on my other site a few weeks ago, and I might re-do this one before its 6th anniversary in a few weeks. It would be nice, but it’s not a priority. [...]

    — DV for Teachers » Blog Archive » WordPress Theme Resources, January 3, 2007

  28. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 Graphic design - XHTML/CSS templating - Understanding how Wordpress themes are put together - Knowing when and how to install plugins - Knowing at least a little bit of PHP … (tags: Wordpress webdesign theme reference design tips blog) [...]

    — links for 2007-01-03 » Bloganbieter.de, January 3, 2007

  29. The new beta FireBug is completely different from the older versions. One of the best things is that you can detach the inspector panel to a separate window; if you have 2 monitors move it to your second monitor and edit HTML/CSS on the fly.

    Plus, if you open a new FireFox tab you don’t lose your changes (like WebDeveloper).

    The other amazing feature is the layout box which shows you offsets, margin, padding measurements with a ruler. This is killer.

    FireBug is absolutely essential for debugging JavaScript no more need for the alert(’foo’); debugging.

    Now if only something like this worked on IE….?

    — Tim Bednar, January 3, 2007

  30. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme - cre8d design [...]

    — Drainedge Link Tank » Today’s Links, January 3, 2007

  31. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme  [...]

    — ceslava.com » ¿Cómo crear una plantilla para tu blog en Wordpress?, January 3, 2007

  32. [...] Segnalo un link per gli sviluppatori interessati alla creazione di temi WordPress [...]

    — Creazione di temi per il WordPress, January 3, 2007

  33. Opera Developer Tools: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-developer-tools/

    Includes Live CSS Editor and DOM console.

    — Stahn, January 3, 2007

  34. Great article!

    — Bárbara, January 3, 2007

  35. thanks for the list

    — wayne, January 3, 2007

  36. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: wordpress design webdesign theme reference tips blog) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

    — ARTbird309’s Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-04, January 3, 2007

  37. [...] Site met nuttige links voor een Wordpress Theme (re)design Filed under Linkblog.  | var blogTool = “WordPress”; var blogURL = “http://style.oversubstance.net”; var blogTitle = “Style.overSubstance”; var postURL = “http://style.oversubstance.net/2006/12/21/6/”; var postTitle = “”; var commentAuthorFieldName = “author”; var commentAuthorLoggedIn = false; var commentFormID = “commentform”; var commentTextFieldName = “comment”; var commentButtonName = “submit”; [...]

    — at Style.overSubstance, January 3, 2007

  38. hai, i am new to this blog. i have a Blogspot blog, http://digitol.blogspot.com. I would like to make a new, more graphical design, of my own. You said that Photoshop is useful. Where can I find some articles and tutorials on webdesign using Photoshop?

    — Sumesh, January 4, 2007

  39. sorry, i messed up with the link-

    its http://digitol.blogspot.com

    Thanks,
    Sumesh

    — Sumesh, January 4, 2007

  40. Sumesh, I would get a few photoshop books, there are some good tutorials online - you might find Computer Arts helpful, or Photoshop TV.

    — Rachel C, January 4, 2007

  41. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: Design_Ideas) [...]

    — links for 2007-01-04 at Amy Stephen, January 4, 2007

  42. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: design wordpress webdesign theme reference) [...]

    — Akkam’s Razor, January 5, 2007

  43. [...] Link [...]

    — blog.mojeauto.net » WordPress Theme Tools, January 5, 2007

  44. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: wordpress themes) [...]

    — mhinze.com » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-03, January 5, 2007

  45. [...] Useful Resources for Creating a Wordpress Theme Lists dozens of references, which might be useful if you are going to design a new Wordpress theme. [...]

    — Web-Sites of the Month: December 2006 | Smashing Magazine, January 6, 2007

  46. Great list. Also worthy of mention: I’m using aggrss, a plug-in to display RSS feed in a column. Available at http://www.soderlind.no/

    It’s a great resource to supplement news content to a site.

    — craig kerwien, January 6, 2007

  47. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 Posted in bookmarks | Trackback | del.icio.us [...]

    — Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 : Popular Bookmarks : eConsultant, January 6, 2007

  48. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: blogging design templates tips tools webdesign wordpress) [...]

    — links for 2007-01-04 at guessboy, January 6, 2007

  49. [...] Link | Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme [...]

    — Trasteando con OS X » Posts » Recursos para Wordpress, January 6, 2007

  50. I just wanted to thank you for what you’ve provided here. It will be invaluable when I make the plunge to make my own themes and help to teach others to do the same.

    I would also like to extend a HUGE thank you to Tim Bednar (in an above comment) for mentioning Firebug! This is the ultimate tool that EVERY web designer should be using. It’s also pretty handy for those people that are wanting to learn HTML and CSS. I don’t know how I lived without this extension! :)

    — Tina Stephen, January 8, 2007

  51. [...] This is part of a series of posts on how to create a Wordpress theme. See also: Step 1 and Useful Resources. [...]

    — Wordpress theme: Creating a theme (Step 2) | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0, January 9, 2007

  52. [...] cre8d design has written a pretty good list of resources for WordPress theme developement. They include one of my personal favorites, W3Schools.com, which has a lot of useful Web tutorials. BookmarkThese icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

    — Educated » Blog Archive » Useful Tips for WordPress Theme Design, January 10, 2007

  53. Useful Tips for WordPress Theme Design…

    cre8d design has written a pretty good list of resources for WordPress theme developement. They include one of my personal favorites, W3Schools.com, which has a lot of useful Web tutorials.

    ……

    — Educated, January 10, 2007

  54. [...] Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme | cre8d design: blog design, Wordpress themes, Drupal, Web 2.0 (tags: wordpress) [...]

    — Utopia Parkway · links for 2007-01-04, January 11, 2007

  55. [...] When use blog search i found this link and it really useful resources for creating a wordpress theme You can use the info for to get idea how to start your blog. [...]

    — Secret 2 Make Money Online » Useful resources for creating a Wordpress theme, January 13, 2007

  56. Thank you so much for sharing these great links. I’ve still finished some themes and must find time to step into the templates.

    — Natti, January 14, 2007

  57. luv it - thanks a lot! Great links!

    — Antje, January 18, 2007