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Wordpress Design ideas and theme creation tips

So you want to make Wordpress themes or design themes yourself huh! Well, you came to right place. This article is about Wordpress themes.

 

Wordpress has taken the design or development to the next level. It’s customization functionality making Wordpress as backbone for the website development. You can find many Wordpress themes online if you don’t wish to spend time behind design of your site. Sometimes people get confused while looking for readily available themes as they have thousands of different choices available for their site, people can’t judge or choose the best among them. So if you don’t want to go for all these confusing stuff you can opt to designing theme for your site.

 

A good Wordpress designer will create attractive and efficient designs for themes with some the help of plan to create it, layouts, use first the default theme to start and then try to modify it the way he want.

 

Before we move further let’s first focus on basic structure of Wordpress theme. Wordpress themes reside in directory with path /wp-content/theme.

 

-      Wordpress theme contains CSS file. This CSS file contains the required information about the theme.

-      Second file is index.php file which is a template file includes php code for theme. This file is loaded while using theme.

-      The third file is header.php. This file contains the first part of the template of your theme. Basically will contain the header of your site, title and other links that will appear at the top of site.

-      Fourth file is footer.php file. This file contains the last elements of template of theme.  Generally contains the contact us or sitemap or other links and copyrights line.

-      Apart from these four basic files Wordpress theme may contain other files like archive.php, component.php, sidebar.php also.

-      Here I tried to mention few simple tips to create or design Wordpress theme. There are certain things that one should maintain to get good designs and themes.

-      The first thing you need to carry out is design web layout of your theme. There are certain things which you can figure out by creating web layout. You should make plan about your design what you guys want to add in your site. Basic things which I observed in most of sites are header, sidebar, front page, comment area, feedback, search, menu and link.

-      Try to imagine how your theme will work after completion of design. You should know the flow of your site how user will move or navigate from one page to another. So, try to imagine the work flow of design simultaneously.

-      Start with default theme as default themes are tested through many users and due to that all bugs would have been removed from it. These will give you smooth start to design new themes using default theme.

-      Most important thing is Navigation. Try to design the theme that provides user of your site easy navigation from one page to another page of your site. You can create menu at the top of your site that will provide ease for navigation.

-      A good design requires consistency:  It’s backbone for successful designs. If you have selected particular fonts on the front page then you should maintain consistency in fonts throughout the site in every page. Maintain the consistency is mandatory for great designs.

-      Code validation, easy to do but mandatory to avoid later problems: This is one thing that one good Wordpress designer should always follow while designing any theme for site. Validation of HTML and CSS must be done to enhance the look and performance of site.

-      Cling yourself to comment each line of code if possible: Comment for major loops or code will make your theme easy to understand by others as well as will help you to find any bugs later on in the code.

-      Make your theme design compatible to all most every browser. That will help to make your site user friendly. You can use some tool available for the same online.

 

There are some small things also that you should keep in mind while designing theme. Provide easy access to your site rather than using messages or videos at the beginning of your site. You can create your error page more attractive.

 

Well, these are some important tips to design your Wordpress theme. You can use lots of other stuff which will make your design look more attractive.

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