Neil Merton

Custom Wordpress Theme

It’s taken a while, but I achieved my goal I set for myself this weekend: to complete my first custom Wordpress theme for the website. And to top it all I’m actually very happy with the outcome!

Saying this I’ve not yet implemented any of my WP To-do List - I’ll get round to those two items in September.

How did I find creating a custom theme from scratch? Not back actually. Kudos goes to the Wordpress team for making such an easy-to-theme application - the Codex helped immensely when trying to find out which ‘tag’ to use to get the desired result.

What’s my favourite part of the theme? It’s got to be the Admin Bar (not that you see it as it’s only visible when the admin person is logged in). When logged in the About text is replaced by administration options. To get an idea of what I mean have a look at the screenshot below (animated):

What would my tips be for anyone wishing to create a custom theme? Here they are:

1. Have a look through the code of other themes you like the functionality of - quite often someone has already done what you’d like to achieve.
2. Search the Codex site - it has ALL the answers.
3. Persevere - it’s worth it in the end!

Finally, if anyone has any questions about how I achieved anything on the theme please feel free to either leave a comment, or use the contact page - I’ll happily try to answer your questions.

I’ve tested the theme in Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.5.0.6 and Opera 9.01 (all on Windows) - if you’re a Mac user please let me know if there seems to be any oddities when viewing the theme. Thanks.