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Options for creating a Wordpress theme.
I, like many other web designers these days use Wordpress as the plaform to manage and organise websites. Because of the sheer simplicity and flexibility at the core of Wordpress I find it hard to find a reason to not use it when taking on a project where the client will want to regularly update their site. Even if the client doesn’t want to update their site reugularly, Wordpress will allow them to.
The other great thing about wordpress is the ability to scale it up using things like plugins and custom fields. I recently finished a site for an online store using Wordpress and the WP-Ecommerce plugin. It’s a full proper functioning E-Commerce CMS with everything you would expect and it was all free and built using Wordpress.
There are many different ways to build a site using Wordpress and I thought it would be useful to run through some of the different options available to us web designers and where these resources can be found.
Working off the standard ‘Kubrick’ theme -
This is how I started making Wordpress sites. You install Wordpress, make a copy of the ‘default’ folder, change it’s name and then go at the code. It works well, doesn’t have too much already going on and has all the necessary files. Good for begineers who can see how the code is laid out and how the loop works.
Using a theme development framework and child themes -
A framework is designed to speed up the theme development process for developers. There are many available and some are pretty full on but if you know you’re php then a framework will cut out all of the unwanted repetitive coding allowing for more time spent on product features.
Here are some of the more popular frameworks available:
Thematic – Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.
Thematic uses Child Themes, these are essentially stripped down versions of a full WP theme, that needs the Thematic Framework for functionality.
WP framework – This serves as the starting point in WordPress theme development. It accomplishes this by providing you with commonly used functions and features that modern WordPress themes should have. So when you start a brand new WordPress project, using WP Framework you’ll already have the basic functionality set so you don’t have to worry about mundane task like creating the loop, or recreating all the standard template files.
Carrington – This framework provides a way of organizing a WordPress theme, coupled with a core framework engine that provides a bunch of exciting functionality for free, just by creating different named templates. The Carrington framework is a completely additive framework. It builds on the existing core WordPress theme structure and functionality and uses core WordPress theme functions for easy adoption by experienced theme authors. Possibly the most powerful of all frameworks available.
Barebones themes -
Another option and my personal choice to create Wordpress sites is to use a barebones theme. These are stripped out themes that just give enough to make the site function. It’s a good progression from working off the kubrick theme and allows to build the site without having to do any of the pre-stripping.
Here are a cpuple of the more popular barebone themes available:
Starkers – This is what I’ve recently started using. It’s basic but works for me and my level of knowledge of themeing Wordpress. Starkers is a bare-bones WordPress theme created to act as a starting point for the theme designer. Free of all style, presentational elements, and non-semantic markup, Starkers is the perfect ‘blank slate’ for your projects, as it’s a stripped-back version of the ‘Default’ theme that ships with WordPress.
Gravy – A set of baseline Photoshop files and WordPress templates that work in conjunction, enabling front-end designers to rapidly create, slice and build mockups. For designers new to WordPress and CSS, Gravy is also a great learning tool as it clearly illustrates the relationship between design, code and PHP using consistent patterns and naming conventions.
There are many many many more options within these categories for any designer or developer to choose from – if you really wanted to do you can just purchase a nice theme ready made a slap on your clients logo…but that’s no fun. Personally I love getting into Wordpress and am steadily learning about it’s capailities to make better and more functional websites. I’m nowhere near calling myself a php developer but Wordpress is helping me edge closer to understanding how I can make sites work better for my client.
