Not sure if you have heard about this latest trend in the blogging and overall online data management systems, but there is this framework called ‘WordPress’ that we believe is going to be big. Like huge. In fact, we will go out on a limb and say that ‘09 is going to be the year this little guy takes off. Okay, so we are a bit behind on this one, but to be fair, we didn’t actually have a blog back when WordPress came out, so we never got to write about it like it was new. That was fun! Moving on…
Seriously though, WordPress is an unstoppable force of nature at this point, and it dominates the online content management market. Like we discussed on our friend Brian’s site over at Elite By Design, with the guest post 10 Best Free WordPress Themes You Haven’t Seen, WordPress is used on hundreds of thousands of sites, and that number is growing daily.
With the enthusiasm not slowing down, we decided that we would put together a compilation of resources that every developer working to put new themes for WordPress out into the community needs to be aware of. We hope you those interested in trying their hand at these themes will find this as useful as maybe some existing developers who may find some new places to pick up a thing or two.
Getting Started
In every journey you must have a starting point, and we believe the natural place to start would be with the following links in this case. Not really much else to say other than that.
How To Set Up Wordpress on a Hard Drive
If you're a theme developer the last thing you want to do is have to upload your files every time you want to see changes you've made to the theme you're building. I did this until I discovered xampp and installed wordpress on my Hard Drive. This saved me so much time that I immediately wrote a tutorial. If you're a new theme developer or a seasoned developer who still uploads your files to view changes, this is the first thing I would recommend doing.
Sample Post Collection
When developing wordpress themes you're also going to need some content (posts, pages, categories, etc) to fully test the usability of your theme. WP Candy has created this simple xml file that you can import into the wordpress install that you just put on your hard drive giving you samples of everything you will need to build a theme.
-
Features
- Multiple posts with different elements in each
- 12 Posts to force pagination
- Blockquotes, lists - ordered and unordered - and floating images
- Comments on a few of the posts
- Parent, child, and grandchild categories and pages
- Tags
- Multiple months for the archives
Theme Frameworks
While some people prefer to build their themes from the ground up, I like to work with a bare bones theme framework giving me a foundation to build from. Here are my two favorite frameworks.
Starkers
A completely stripped down theme. If you want something super-simple to start out with, stripped down to the bare minimum of markup, use Starkers.
-
Features
- All non-semantic, presentational class names removed
- All non-semantic, presentational HTML elements removed
- All unnecessary elements removed
- Elements converted where necessary
- Browser defaults reset in the ‘reset.css’ to give a true clean slate
Thematic
This one comes with a bit more power originally built in. A highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins and more.
-
Features
- Continually advancing Search Engine optimization
- Ready for Subscribe to Comments, WP-PageNavi and Comment License
- Fully widget-ized with widget areas above and below the content—and even in-between
- A grid-based starting point based on the 960 Grid System
- CSS Reset and Typography based on Blueprint and Tripoli
- 3 Bulletproof sample Stylesheets; 2 column samples, left and right, and a 3 column stylesheet with both columns on the left
- The sample stylesheets are aligned to a strict 18px vertical grid featuring refreshing and sophisticated typography
- Built from the rock solid Sandbox, making it perfect for customization
- Editable footer text; take out the theme credits from a theme options page without harming the theme
- Options for Multi-Author blogs
Tutorials
There are very few of us that could say with a straight face that we have nothing to learn, and fewer of us who could say it with those around us keeping a straight face. To that end, here are a few fabulous tutorials that will help teach you a thing or two. Or remind you of something you learned long ago and forgot.
How to Create a Wordpress Theme from Scratch
A tutorial that teaches you how to take a HTML/CSS template and turn it into a functioning WordPress theme.
Mastering Wordpress Theme Hacks and Techniques
Developing a Wordpress Theme
The Complete Wordpress Theme Guide
How to Separate Wordpress Comments and Trackbacks
How to Highlight Author Comments in Wordpress
Reference Guides and Cheat Sheets
To make things easier on yourself, we have prepared a short list of references that will act as a veritable cheat sheet for you as you strike out on this developer’s path. Go on, feed your inner slacker.
The Wordpress Help Sheet
-
Features
- Basic Template Files
- PHP Snippets for the Header
- PHP Snippets for the Templates
- And Extra Stuff for WordPress
Wordpress Template Tag Reference Guide
A great resource that lists all tags alphabetically by type.
Loading...
That’s a pretty extensive list. Love the sample post collection — that will help me be more complete in my styling. Thanks so much!
Brandon Coxs last blog post..Danny R. Kirk Logo and Blog
Sweet list of resources that could come in handy. Thanks!
Great agg, and great timing. I just got back from Borders Books with the latest copy of Luke Welling and Laura Thomson’s PHP and MySQL Web Development, getting ready to dive into WordPress. Thanks.
Thank you, this is very useful
@Brandon — I was really excited to find the sample posts too, they make things so much easier!
@Corey @RG — No problem, I’m glad you found them useful
@Nik — Awesome, I’m glad I could be of help. I’m going to be delving more into wordpress this year so expect many more articles here on the subject.
Wow… this is the best list of WordPress resources I’ve seen! These will all be very useful. Thanks for sharing!
@Bobby — Wow, thanks! What a great compliment! I’m glad we could be of help :)
Way to go! Thank you!
nice list dont want to be like spam but theres alot of tutorials about wp on wp-tutorials.org
Omars last blog post..Optimize Your Blog for SEO, Make Sure Your Header Tags Are Setup
@Marcin — No problem :)
@Omar — wp-tutorials is a great site that I had never come across before. I subscribed, thanks for recommending it!
Thanks a ton for this post. Extremely useful for when I’m writing WP themes!
Matts last blog post..Branding: Finding the Perfect Name
Great list, thank you
@Matt @Kate — No problem, I hope you found some useful resources you didn’t already know about :)
Very helpful list. Thanks.
Gelays last blog post..My first kira
nice and helpful selections.. thanks..
joyoge designers’ bookmarks last blog post..The 10 Best Graphic Design Blogs of 2008 | Presidia Creative
there is a simple wordpress framework/blank theme called whiteboard that ive started to use as it comes with just a reset css and allows me to start fresh each time. just a note for next time.
http://plainbeta.com/2008/05/20/whiteboard-a-free-wordpress-theme-framework/
Have you checked out http://iStylr.com ? I’m missing it on this list…
Thanks, I’ve been looking for a guide to setup WP on my harddrive!
Vista Themes´s last blog ..Luxury Vintage Nokia S40 Theme
Thanks very much! I’m in the process pf development brilliant WP theme so it came really in time :)
Julia´s last blog ..Abstract Energy Brushes