Creating your WordPress theme from scratch isn’t as challenging and tricky as it seems. One can do it with no lines of code or files, which makes the life of non-tech people simple!
If you want to create a perfect WordPress theme, the best way is to do everything by hand without anybody’s support. The reason is that you should know everything about how your theme is built.
Through this guide, you’ll be able to know how flexible WordPress is in terms of theme building and how to develop your desired theme in no time!
Being an expert in custom WordPress development services, we always ensure the right talent doesn’t waste their time. Therefore, with the help of our WordPress development company, we have written how to become a pro-WordPress custom theme developer.
It’s time to grab the knowledge!
5 Reasons to Create WordPress Theme Online
The following list contains several reasons to customize WordPress themes. Have a look at it.
Unable to find the perfect theme aligning with your business goals
We all think in different ways. What sort of design you want in your WordPress theme could be unique from the rest of the world. What functionalities you want may be something no other had thought of. In short, vision, goals, content, and requirements will vary. You may not find a perfect fit (there are pretty few chances) WordPress Theme if you imagine something unique. In such a case, developing a WordPress theme by yourself is the smarter idea.
Against Limitations of WordPress Theme Templates
See, no WordPress Theme is 100% perfect. There are always pros and cons because, at the end of the day, it’s technology. You may find a solid and lightweight theme, but a few design options may be missing.
Why compromise?
If you design a personal WordPress theme, you won’t be restricted to several design options.
When You Want Unique Design
See, no WordPress Theme is 100% perfect. There are always pros and cons because, at the end of the day, it’s technology. You may find a solid and lightweight theme, but a few design options may be missing.
Why compromise?
If you design a personal WordPress theme, you won’t be restricted to several design options
Expect a Completely Unique Design
What’s the decent thing about uniqueness? Ever tried wearing a fully unique watch or clothes? Did it manage to grab the attention of the others around you?
There’s the answer!
A unique solution mostly attracts (until there is nothing messy), and the same goes for WordPress themes. If you go for a pre-built theme, there are full chances that thousands of others may have used the same theme.
What’s unique, then? What if you want to have something unmatched? A self-customized WordPress theme is the answer!
Lightweight Code Excluding Feature bloat for Unnecessary Elements
Ever thought of buying a whole shoe rack when you like just 1-2 pairs of shoes kept in them? Why are you buying the rest that doesn’t seem useful to you?
No-brainer, isn’t it?
Why import all the unnecessary code from their-built themes, especially when you know that it will drop your website’s loading speed?
Again, the solution to this is a personally customized WordPress theme. You include only those codes which you need. This leads to a much better site loading speed.
5 Benefits of WordPress Custom Theme
The following pointers describe the benefits of using WordPress’s custom theme.
Be Orginal in the Lane of Duplicate Theme Developers
A custom WordPress theme is known for its originality. It is very easy to get a generic result using a pre-made template.
Hosting Tribunal estimates that 661 WordPress-powered websites are created each day. A custom WordPress theme can help your company stand out among the rest.
Reduced Development Time
Many businesses assume using a pre-made template theme will be the best option. Everything is already set up and ready to go for users. These templates can be a great way to save developers time.
This is because the company needs to be different from other WordPress websites. Websites that use a template will not stand out.
A template may not be able to match the website’s visual theme. Websites can be cluttered with unneeded assets while missing assets can make the site look messy or leave it without the necessary functions.
A template theme must be carefully edited to match the theme of the company creating the website. Making a unique WordPress theme for your company will encourage more site traffic and exploration.
Load times faster
Any unnecessary features added to a template theme can quickly crowd a website. This crowding can lead to a website being confusing or lacking in graphic design. A crowded website will run slower than one that is well-planned and efficient.
A slow website is not something consumers want to deal with.
They’re more likely to leave a site if it doesn’t load when they click on it. Unbounce estimates that the average website takes around 15 seconds to load.
This is an average load time, but consumers who wait less than five seconds to load a site are more likely to spend 70% or more on it than those who wait longer.
Second, website load times have an impact on search engine optimization. SEO refers to how high your website will appear for a specific query in a search engine.
A website’s rating will determine how high it appears in search engines. Higher rankings mean more traffic.
SEO depends on many factors, including the quality of the site and the language used. However, performance assets like a fast load time are also exceptionally important. Google even has guidelines for the same.
It’s easier to update custom themes
Developers who use template themes will find it difficult to modify them over time. On the other hand, custom themes are easier to modify and edit.
Although editing a template theme might seem easy in theory, it can be quite difficult. As mentioned earlier, custom themes are a faster choice. This trait makes custom themes faster and more adaptable.
This is crucial for the long term because websites can’t be the same forever. It must be regularly updated to keep up with changes in the market, consumer needs, and the latest technologies.
Website developers will find it easier to adapt the website to meet the company’s changing needs by using a custom theme.
Greater Security
The biggest problem with blanket technology such as WordPress templates is their tendency to have blanket flaws.
This means that if a template is vulnerable to security flaws or has poor programming, all websites that use it will need to fix or work around them.
Custom themes for WordPress websites don’t come with the same limitations as standard themes. These themes can be created with security in mind and polished performance. They can be modified more quickly and easily than a template.
If your company discovers a flaw after launching a website, you can fix it quickly rather than waiting for the bug to fester and cause disruption to the website’s performance.
How to Become a Pro WordPress Custom Theme Developer
First, you must install WordPress. WordPress can be downloaded from the official website. However, you will need to modify your database credentials first.
It doesn’t matter if you know PHP or have some previous WordPress knowledge. To design a WordPress theme, you must have a development environment that supports PHP, MySQL, Apache, and WordPress. It is important to understand the structure of the theme. A WordPress theme can be described as a regular HTML page. It consists of the following files.
- Header.php – It contains the code to create the header section.
- Sidebar.php – It contains information about the sidebar.
- Index.php – It contains the Main Area code. It will also specify the location of the other files. This is the main theme file.
- Footer.php- It’s the footer section.
- Single.php – t contains code to display the article on its webpage;
- Style.css – It’s responsible for styling your theme.
- Page.php – It contains code to display a single page’s contents;
- Functions.php – This file includes functions that improve theme functionality, such as logos and menus, color thumbnails, scripts, and stylesheets.
- Archive.php – It displays the list of items in the archive and the categories the user has created;
- 404.php – It’s an error code that indicates that the file the user requested is missing.
Let’s now move on to creating a WordPress theme.
Step 1: Create a folder for the files that you will be adding
Everything you do in WordPress other than configuring will be stored in the wp-content folder. Core code is everything else, and you don’t want to mess around with that. If we want to build themes, it’s vital to understand where the files that make up a WordPress template are located in a WordPress install. A WordPress directory is the root directory of a WordPress installation. Look at the structure of the root directory.
Files:
- index.php
- Readme.html
- license.txt
- wp-activate.php
- wp-config-sample.php
- Wp-comments-post.php
- wp-blog-header.php
- Wp-config.php
- wp-login.php
- wp-links-opml.php
- wp-cron.php
- Wp-mail.php
- wp-trackback.php
- wp-load.php
- wp-signup.php
- wp-settings.php
- xmlrpc.php
Folders
- wp-includes
- Wp-content
- Wp-admin
To reach your themes folder, follow the path of wp_content > themes in Finder. The default WordPress themes will be displayed – twenty-nineteenth, twenty-twenty, and twenty-twenty-one – along with index.php. You can create a new directory to house your theme.
Step 2: Create the Custom Template
Two files are compulsory for creating a WordPress theme: index.php and style.css. When you build your theme folder, you will need to create the two files – index.php and style.cs. Style.css is a comment that informs WordPress that there is a theme. This is compulsory for all themes. It contains the information header of your theme. You can change the author, name, and description. Let’s look at the meanings of each one.
Theme Name: Always provide a theme name. The folder name will be used if you don’t provide one.
Theme URL: It should direct users to a website that explains the theme.
Author – Here is where your name will be listed.
Author URL: You can add a link to your personal or business website.
Description: This description is in both the WordPress theme listing and the wp-admin Theme modal.
Version: Version numbers assist developers in keeping track and ensuring customers have the most current version.
License: Although you can choose the licensing method for your theme, if it’s not compatible with GPL, it will be impossible to distribute it on WordPress.
Step 3: Activate your Theme
Go to the WordPress Dashboard, choose “Appearance,” and then “Themes” to see if your newly created theme is there. Go to “Theme Details” to verify that the style information is correct. Next, activate the theme and go back to your main URL. This will create a custom theme. It doesn’t have the same functionality as a static HTML website, but it’s all done now.
Step 4: Modify the settings in the index.php file
You can test your theme by going back to index.php. Next, you will need to write a command-line for WordPress to fetch the posts from the database and display them on the page. To ensure that all files are visible on the home page, you must first restore the title and content of each post.
WP can use the “have posted” command to search for blog posts within its database. If there are new listings, the page will be updated. If there are no new listings, the message regarding the negative response condition we have set in the code (false) will be displayed.
To allow WP to display a file when the “have posted” condition is true, a function called “the post” must be added to the loop. WordPress searches for new entries and displays them on the page as necessary.
The “the Post” method retrieves the most recent post and makes necessary adjustments to display it chronologically on your theme page. This function is loop-based, so if it returns true, each new post will be included immediately.
The content is attached as a file title to the page created using the “the contents” function. “The permalink” function creates links to individual posts, allowing users to access the information without scrolling through the whole text of the main page. You can use the “the excerpt” method to add a summary under the file title. This will include the first 200 characters of each content. The user will only see the entire text when clicking on the link.
Step 5: Divide Your Page into Sections
Everything is currently in index.php. We want all pages’ header, footer, and sidebar to be identical. We’re going to split index.php into two sections: header.php, and footer.php
It is a good idea to include wphead in all your themes. This function wraps up the header.php section’s head> section output. To make adding plugins to your site easier, you should enter it before the closing tag /head>. This hook can integrate styles and scripts into the head> area.
Many websites, particularly blogs, have side areas for content, such as archives, tags, and categories. You can also divide the index.php in sidebar.php and content.php if you wish to include them. The sidebar contains secondary information, while the content houses the main content.
Step 6: Create the functions.php file
Your custom theme now contains the style.css footer.php files and header.php files. Functions.php is the next file that you need. This gives WordPress its personality and allows the command-line access to modify the default behavior of the CMS. It does not require a unique header text. It works only if the current theme is active.
FAQs About WordPress Development
Checkout the most asked WordPress development questions
What is WordPress theme design?
The practice of customizing a WordPress theme is to customize the layout and visual design of a WordPress website, so you don’t have to stick with pre-made themes.
What are the benefits of WordPress theme design?
WordPress theme development offers the main advantage of customizing your website’s design and layout to meet your specific preferences and specifications. Website owners don’t have to be proficient in PHP, HTML, or CSS. They can still develop a beautiful website.
Ready to Develop Your Website?
This article was about the basics of creating a WordPress theme. WordPress is a complex topic. There are many more things to learn. We hope that this article has paved a new way for you. You now know that any website can easily be transformed into a WordPress theme without needing plugins, widgets, or a theme from another source.