Having your website is one thing. But developing a WordPress theme is another. Why? It’s because your site’s theme is the one which brings personality to your site.
Not to mention, a WordPress theme optimized for performance like the ones seen here at Colorlib is what differentiates you from your competitors. It is what defines you and your business.
So how can you develop a WordPress theme? Yes, it might be all-technical and complicated. But worry not, because that’s just what we’re going to teach you here. Once you’re done reading, you’ll surely say that developing your WordPress theme isn’t that difficult!
1. Install WordPress
The first thing you need to do is to install WordPress. Sounds too obvious, right? Well, as simple as it sounds, it is still a big necessity. It’s through this that you’re able to build up your theme and further improve the look and feel of your site. The installation process is the core of your theme, so you don’t want to mess up with it.
Creating a “home” for WordPress
In doing this, you need to create an empty directory. It doesn’t matter which drive you put it in. As long as it has adequate space, that’s good to go. That’s where you’re going to direct your virtualhost.
Download and Unzip WordPress
Head to the WordPress’ official download page. Find the latest WordPress version and download it. Unzip the downloaded file and transfer all of the folder’s contents to the directory you’ve created earlier.
Make a WordPress Database
Now it’s time for you to create a database. But before that, you’ll find that there’s no pre-installed phpMyAdmin. To get it, download SequelPro if you’re a Mac user, or SQLYog if you’re running in Windows. Once done downloading, go to the database and login. You can find it in 127.0.0.1. The username and password are both “root.”
Inputting
After logging in, you then need to enter a few important things such as your email address, username, and password. You’ll then be brought to the /wp-login.php. Type your URL in the address bar, and you’ll see “Hello, World!”.
2. Create a Custom Theme
All of the things you’ve done in WordPress are stored in the wp-content folder. And most of them are in the form of codes, so you don’t want to tweak them up as it’ll surely turn corrupt.
Go to your themes folder by entering wp-content. You’ll then see WordPress’ default themes, twentyfifteen, twentyfourteen, and twentythirteen. Make another directory where you’re going to store your theme. Input the theme name, the author, and the theme description.
Then move the two Bootstrap codes to the custom theme folder. These are the blog.css and index.html. Then rename index.html into index.php.
And you’re theme has just been created! Activate it, open your main URL, and click refresh.
3. Divide Pages into Different Sections
Now is the time for you to further enhance your theme by making sure that the header, footer, and sidebar are all in adherence to your preferences. Divide the index.php to four different sections namely, footer.php, header.php, content.php, and sidebar.php.
Header
Make sure that and the main blog header are stored in the header file. It’s where you’ll find the different head styles and top navigations features for your site. Everything’s already settled, but you just want to add little toppings to it. Simply add
prior to the closing
.
Footer
Add the JS links and before the