WordPress Theme Design – Getting Started

The most technical part of this whole endeavor will be setting up a 'sandbox' in which you can test your design. If you haven't already I recommend starting by installing WAMP on your computer and setting up a local WordPress blog that you can edit freely without an internet connection. If you're not familiar with how to do this I recommend checking out the excellent tutorial provided by Urban Girafe. Once this is done you'll have a WordPress blog that you can play around with without fear of destroying your main site.

If you can't get WAMP running on your PC then you've also got the option of creating a sub-directory on the server that hosts your main site. If you've setup WordPress once the method is very similar, just create a sub-directory and install a brand new blog there. After it's setup head to the privacy section of the Options panel and be sure that the blog is marked "Private." This will prevent any traffic hitting your sandbox and make sure your design remains private while it's still being developed.

In preparation for some of our later posts you can also create some blank files for the basic parts of your theme.

Template Files Needed for Starting a Theme

Generally speaking you'll need five files when you start designing a new theme. Eventually you'll customize the category, post and page files but for now just the basics are ideal. Head to the themes directory of your WordPress install and create blank files with the following names:

1. style.css
2. header.php
3. index.php
4. sidebar.php
5. footer.php

Tomorrow we'll discuss what to put into these files to generate your first (extremely minimal) WordPress theme.