My Way of WordPress.org Theme
A WordPress.org site has an infinite number of themes you can choose from. After choosing your theme, you can make necessary changes that you want to improve or make your theme better. No theme is permanent, you can activate any theme that fits you best. There is a Free Themes Directory that has different themes that you can also activate. When finding your theme, you can filter your search list based on color, columns, fixed or flexible width, and other features. WordPress.org allows you to preview it to. Whenever you want to make your own or make changes to existing themes you will need some extra files. You can also go to the edit themes in the admin or use notepad ++. A theme consists of a number of template files, all stored in the theme folder which we find in wp-content/themes. Every WordPress Theme has to include at least two files: index.php and style.css. The index file defines what content is displayed by the theme, and the style sheet contains information about the theme that WordPress uses to make the theme work correctly. Most themes have a few additional files: header.php (contains the <head> sections of each page plus the header of the website’s design), sidebar.php (contains the sidebar, including any widget areas), footer.php (contains any functions that are specific to your theme. You can develop your own WordPress Theme by first creating a Child Theme. This is your style.css file. Create the following using comments: Theme name, Theme URI, Author, Author URI, description, Version, Tags and other comments. After the stylesheet is complete, your theme should show up blank in the admin panel under themes now you can activate it. Now it’s time to fill in the template files. The main file you will need to use is the index.php file. It can be used to include all references to the header, footer, sidebar, content, search, and any other page created in WordPress. Or, it can be divided into multiple template files each one taking part of the workload. Create a static webpage with HTML and paste the HTML into the index.php and upload it to the website. Now insert the PHP code <title><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></title> < link rel= “stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url”); ?>”> <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> &nbsp; | &nbsp; <?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?> so you can enable your stuff from your original site. Place a loop (common calls used in the loop: have-post, the_post, the_ID, the_permalink(), the_title_attribute(), the_title(), the_content(), and get_template_part) into the index.php file to create the content. Now create a function.php file so that a menu can be created. Create a home, contact, and any other pages you want to appear in your main menu. Insert <?php wp_nav_menu(array(‘menu’ => ‘Main Menu’) ); ?> and all the menu links should work. Now create a header.php file. Take everything above the content tag and put it in header.php. Now create the footer.php file. Take everything below the content closing tag and put it in footer.php. Now in the index.php we use the get_header and get_footer so it includes the same stuff on all the files. Now create a sidebar.php file. You have to add <?php wp_head(); ?>. You have to register the sidebar by adding <?php add_action( ‘widgeta_init’, ‘scratch_register_sidebar’ ); code to functions.php. Once the sidebar is registered the widget option will become available for the theme which will allow the insertion of various widgets. Once you add the widget you have to place <?php get_sidebar(); ?> in the index.php file and <?php dynamic_sidebar(‘scratch-main’); ?> in the sidebar.php file. Now you have to go back to the style.css file to position your sidebar and your content area. You can also create the color and other functions you want your site on your style.css file. WordPress Themes goes in a subdirectories file of the WordPress themes directory (wp-content/themes/default). You will need to make a name in wp-content/themes for a directory. The Theme’s stylesheet files, template files, and functions file (function.php) goes into that directory name. Once you upload all your files to your directory they should work and now you have developed your theme. While building my WordPress theme I ran into many difficulties with the different files trying to place everything in the correct php folder.