Develop your own Wordpress theme
If you need to get a blog up quickly, Wordpress is a great way to launch a fully featured blog that can be easily customised. Most good web hosts offer Wordpress as part of their standard hosting packages, so in most cases it’s simply a matter of activating Wordpress and starting to communicate what’s on your mind.
If you use the free Wordpress themes your blog may end up looking exactly like the next blog. The good news is that customising Wordpress is relatively easy.
Because Wordpress seperates content and presentation, making your blog look different is a simple matter of choosing a new theme or building your own theme.
What is a theme?
A Wordpress Theme is a collection of files and styles that define a unique look and feel for blog. Each theme can be totally different and use Wordpress features in different ways.
Building your own theme requires a little knowledge about CSS, XHTML, and PHP.
All files relating to a theme are located in wp-content/themes/. For example, if a theme is named SuccessBox, in most cases it would be located at wp-content/themes/SuccessBox/. This directory would contain all template files, a functions file, style sheets, and images.
The following files are generally found in a theme.
- 404 Template = 404.php
- Archive Template = archive.php
- Archive Index Page = archives.php
- Comments Template = comments.php
- Footer Template = footer.php
- Header Template = header.php
- Links = links.php
- Main Template = index.php
- Page Template = page.php
- Popup Comments Template = comments-popup.php
- Post Template = single.php
- Search Form = searchform.php
- Search Template = search.php
- Sidebar Template = sidebar.php
- Stylesheet = style.css
Selecting a new theme
To select a new theme:
- Login to the Wordpress Admin console;
- Select the Presentation menu option;
- Select a theme from the available themes;
- Preview the theme.
Some cool themes
A small selection of some Wordpress themes we really like:
- http://www.templateworld.com/zero/in_action/time_manager/index.html
- http://www.templateworld.com/zero/click.php?id=4
- http://jspofo.com/blog/
- http://www.kapikua.com/theme-leia-en/
- http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=343
Where to next?
Melbourne IT Unix Website Hosting plans have a Wordpress blog included. Visit our web hosting pages or call 1300 132 838 for more information.