Think about what information you want to display, what you want to focus on, and how best to display it. Have a look at how other blogs lay out their content and think about what you like and don’t like about the layout (try not to focus on the design elements at this point).

For most blogs, this will consist of:

• Logo/introduction to a blog
• Main menu
• Blog posts
• Other content (photos, links, bio, music, books, archive links etc).

For this simple theme I’m making, I chose the following initial layout:

I’ll be making the footer quite large to organise some of the other content listed above.

Turning this into an XHTML/CSS template doesn’t need to be too difficult. A good place to refer to is this quick start guide where you can copy one of their templates into a text editor.

I’ve stripped this down to the bare basics, put in the different areas of my template and added in some very basic CSS to lay out the areas. This will be tweaked more later. See here » (and view the source code).

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:
  • W3Schools for learning or for quick reference.
  • Firefox web developer toolbar - essential for checking and testing your code. Great for live changing of your CSS.
  • A text editor like Notepad++ to write your code.
  • Browser Shots - for testing your design in different browsers
  • For reference: Listamatic, Layoutomatic, Practical CSS and A List Apart in general, CSS Zen Garden for insight into how to achieve different layouts and effects using CSS and Layout Gala
• 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?