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How to plan and create Wordpress theme

Well, Wordpress without any question is the best and famous blogging platform and publishing tool. Mostly every company or organization has started developments in Wordpress and even started converting their existing sites in Wordpress to take benefits of its rich features. Wordpress is not just all about creating websites but it’s also mainly concern about how the website looks and about its presentation.

If you are new worm in website development and you want to create website using Wordpress you have to options for design of the site, either you can use readily available themes in your site and save the time that you may spend in creating theme or you cling to create new theme yourself for your site which definitely give different look to your site rather than using readily available themes.

First of all creating a Wordpress theme at your own give lots of benefits like:

-     First and most common benefit is unique look of your Wordpress site.

-     Can get different look by using template, template tags and Wordpress loop.

-     Can get options for choosing or switching between two different themes.

-     Separate presentation style and template files from system files which give ease in upgrading of site.

-     Customization of the site unique for your site.

-     Can get chance to learn CSS, HTML and PHP as well as get experience in the same.

-     Help to showcase your creativity.

When you start designing any Wordpress theme, it must be SEO friendly, attractive CSS layout, comments, mircroformat mark-up support etc.

Wordpress theme reside in directory called wp-content/themes/. This directory holds basically CSS Style sheet files, template files, images and other important files of your theme. Wordpress use default theme after installation so try to understand the basic theme first to get good command on theme creation.

Wordpress theme contains few component which helps to build Wordpress theme. Index.php file main file which Wordpress load for theme. Second file is header.php which includes the title of the site and links of the site through which user can navigate easily. Third one is sidebar.php which includes elements that are going to appear on side menu. Fourth is footer.php file which include the lower portion of site.

To create Wordpress theme you need to install development tools like local host to test your site you can go for XAMPP/WAMP/LAMP, text editors, internet explorer which supports your site.

Now first, create one text file using any of text editors and store it in your theme folder with name index.php. Again create one text document and store it in your theme folder with name style.css. These two files are core part of Wordpress theme you are going to create.

MAKE YOUR THEME ACTIVE. Yes, you have to activate theme by going in admin panel->appearance->theme. Locate your theme and just activate it. Now you can see your theme on localhost.

Second step is to create header for your Wordpress theme. Header contains basically the information that will appear at the top of your site mostly title or name of your site and other info or links. For this you have to write code in index.php file. After this you can check whether all contents appear perfectly or not. You can use loops, postmeta data, links, Post ID etc.

Third step is to create side bar or categories for your site. Sidebar plays important role in your Wordpress theme creation. You can add categories, pages, archives etc in sidebar. You can use widgets also to create sidebar for this you have to include one more file called function.php to your theme directory.

Fourth step is to create footer of your Wordpress theme.  Footer basically contains the information that is going to display at the bottom of your site mostly it will include contact us or copyright line and other links for your site. You just have to add the code in index.php for footer what you want to include.

You have to than validate the code you have written to avoid any mistakes later on as it will be tough to find it later on. You must have to practice commenting the code it will make you find the desired code of lines easily and also make others to understand your code can help to solve errors easily. You can then start decorating your site using CSS style sheet.

Your Wordpress theme should meet all the theme development standards too. Code should be well structured, error free, valid HTML. Wordpress theme should meet all the CSS coding standards as well as should meet all design and layout standards as well.

That’s it pal you made your first Wordpress theme. Just test it on browser. But to create Wordpress theme just keep in mind first you have to make plan and design the layouts first, you have to imagine your theme virtually how it will look and make layouts first initially that will help you make full functional theme.

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