Word. Press Theme Customization Guide Press Coders. New to Word. Press theme customization Just brushing up This tutorial guide will teach you how to customize a Word. Press theme the right way. Who is this guide for This guide is intended for those with some knowledge of HTML and CSS, but arent too familiar with the way Word. Press themes work. If you dont know much about web design but you are interested, thats good too. Well explain everything each step of the way. Even if youre a skilled web design veteran theres always something to learn, I know Im still learning Why should I listen to you At Press Coders we have over 2. Starting our own theme company has taught us a ton about themes, and we are here to pass that knowledge on to you. We created our own theme framework, and we currently have 6 themes in our catalog, with more on the way. This whole guide summarized. Are you looking to install a WordPress theme Follow our beginners guide with step by step instructions on how to install a WordPress theme. Heres the big picture this guide will allow you to customize any theme using the best practices in child themeing, with a little CSS and PHP magic. We will create a child theme, make modifications to the style. Next Chapter2. 0 Percentage of sites running Word. Press. 72. 4. MWord. Press sites in the world as of March 2. A wise man learns from his mistakes, a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. Before we dive in, lets get these out of the way. How do I know these rookie mistakesBecause Ive made all of them. I mean, I have a friend who made them1. Not using a child theme. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, hack up core theme files to make changes. Besides screwing up what someone has worked very hard to perfect, you will lose all of your changes when you update the theme. Use a child theme Ignoring Word. Press best practices. Word. Press has specific ways of doing things for a reason. For example, enqueueing scripts. The wpenqueuescript function helps cut down on script conflicts. If you just hard code a script into header. WordPress is a free and opensource content management system CMS based on PHP and MySQL. To function, WordPress has to be installed on a web server, which would. If you enqueue it, Word. Press will magically reduce conflicts, so use it Doing things the hard way. Using the wrong theme for the job. No need to reinvent the wheel. If you are making a site for a photographer, start with a photography theme. If you are working with a real estate agent, use a real estate theme. Not taking advantage of built in theme functionality. Make sure you check out the theme options page. Why write a bunch of custom CSS for buttons and columns if there are shortcodes built in that will do the trick Consult the theme docs. Customizing in the wrong order. If you need to make a small change, dont head straight for the template files. Customize in this order 1. See if a theme option will do the trick. Use CSS to manipulate design child theme style. Use functions. php for structural changes. Add new template files to a child theme. Use a plugin only for major feature additions5. Ignoring functions. Im a front end designer. I ignored this file for far too long, and my work suffered. Dont make the same mistake You can do almost anything with CSS aesthetically, and structural changes can be handled with functions. If you need to add a script to the lt head, dont go hack up the header. Not cross browser testing. So youve made all of your edits, and everything looks perfect in the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome. Youre not done yet Make sure to check all major browsers, including IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and mobile devices. Use a tool with virtual browsers like browserstack. Next ChapterUsing a child theme keeps your parent theme easy to update, while saving your customizations at the same time. Its much easier than worrying about what files youve modified and saving those or making sure you dont overwrite your changes. Ryan Ray, Woothemes. Whats Different About Word. Press Word. Press has a personality all its own that makes it unique to work with. Sometimes thats a good thing, and sometimes you want to bang your head against a wall. The key is to understand Word. Press, at least on a basic level, to make your life easier. Word. Press has a few major components. This may be review for some of you, if so you can skip to the next chapter. 1. The Admin Area. The admin area is where you will make most changes to your site. It is usually accessed by adding wp admin to the end of your url where Word. Press is installed. For example http www. This is where you add text and images, control widgets and menus, change themes or use theme options, etc. The Theme. A theme is the outer shell of a Word. Press site. It consists of a single folder with PHP, CSS, images, and possibly JS files. The theme works together with Word. Press to make your site function and look great. Plugins. Although they are not necessary for your site to function, plugins are an important part of Word. Press. These can be added to your site to bring extra functionality that is not included with Word. Press or a theme. For example, you can use Yoasts SEO plugin to add a plethora of SEO options to your site. Adding a plugin is a simple as uploading a file or folder to your wp contentplugins directory, or just going to Plugins Add New in your admin area. The Database. The database is where all of the content you add to your site is stored. For example, if you write Hello World in a page and publish it, the text Hello World is not physically on any files in Word. Press or your theme. It is stored in the database and pulled in by Word. Press and your theme and displayed on your page. 5. Median hourly rate of a Word. Press designerdeveloper Word. Press. org. 53. 8Word. Press market share of CMS software. Compare to Joomla 9. Drupal 6. 7. Getting used to Word. Press is not always easy, but its worth the effort. Once you get used to it, you will be able to create killer dynamic sites that go far beyond the capabilities of static html. Your clients will love it because they can edit pages themselves For Web Designers. If you are familiar with how a static HTML website works, here are some differences you need to be aware of. Difference 1 Dont edit theme files directly. With a static HTML site, you create html pages and edit them directly. With Word. Press, you have what are called template files, which serve up content from your database. While its possible to put your content directly into a template file, its almost never necessary. You add your content through the Word. Press admin area, which adds it to your database, which then gets pulled in by the template files. Difference 2 There are 5 different places you go to put content on one page. This is one thing I dont like about Word. Press. With a static HTML site, you can go to a page and edit the head, navigation, body content, sidebar, footer, etc. With Word. Press, you can potentially go to 5 different areas or more to edit a single page. This is especially confusing for clients. I said I dont like it, but I didnt say I have a better way. Word. Press, like all CMS systems, has trade offs. The plus of this system is that you can edit the lt head content of every page by going to 1 file for example. Difference 3 Get used to a different way to customize. With Word. Press, you customize your theme using mainly a child theme style. You can also edit template files, and use plugins to change things like SEO tags sitewide. Just keep in mind that Word. Press is template based, so its very easy to make changes to your site globally. Next ChapterLets get started First, you are going to need a Word. Press installation to work with. Installing Word. Press. If you are going to be doing this more than once, it is worth it to install a local server environment like MAMP, XAMPP, or WAMP. If you are on a MAC, I highly recommend MAMP, its the easiest to use. These just allow you to run Word. Press on your local machine without an internet connection. I personally build all of my themes on my local environment before taking them to a live site. If you dont have a local server you can also just install Word. Press on a test site or a directory on an existing site. For example, install Word. Press at http www. Most web hosts allow you to install Word. Press and a database in one click, but if you have to do it manually please consult the guide here http codex. InstallingWord. Press. Choosing a Theme. Ok, now for the fun stuff, lets pick a theme. This is really important, dont gloss over it. Every theme is different, so you should pick a theme and get to know it really well.
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