Resources on wordpress theme-development [closed]

Question

What are the best resources for Wordpress theme-development? I am currently in the phase of starting my own blog, and don't want to use one of the many free themes. I already have a theme for my website, so I want to read about best-practices.

Any advice on how to get started would be very welcome :)

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I have now created my theme (wohoo!), and thought I should summarize the best resources I found. Lets see..

Resources:

• ThemeTation's three-part guide to create a wordpress-theme from scratch
• Nettuts.com's guide: How to Create a Wordpress Theme from Scratch
  Didn't actually use this, it's a quite new article, but anyway - it's great. It will get a follow-up in the next few days too..
• Wordpress.org's own guide on templates
  Definatly a must-read for everyone new to wordpress-designing..
• "The loop"
  Essential knowledge, also a must-read
• Directory of all the template tags
  Used by wordpress to actually output blog-content..

Inspiration:

• Smashing Magazine's lists: first, one more, yet another one
• Wordpress.org's theme-directory

Answer 1

I think that the best way to learn is to look at how other people construct their themes. The first one to start one is the Default Kubrick theme that is included in the standard WordPress install. It has all of the basics and will show you some advanced techniques like including sidebar widgets. Next, in conjunction with the docs on theme development (previously mentioned by Mark), Blog Design and Layout and Using Themes, go to the Theme Directory on the Wordpress.org site, download a couple of popular themes, and go through them, looking up any template tags or techniques that you don't understand. After you do this, you should be more than well-equipped to write your own theme from scratch, or modify an existing theme to your needs.

Answer 2

The Wordpress part is the easy bit. That's basically taking your static HTML pages then converting them to PHP and inserting the Wordpress tags to pull content from the database. In some places these tags will be in a loop, e.g. for a list of pages.

The most difficult part is the design. You should identify the page types you want (e.g. main page, lists of posts, static pages, about) and create the actual templates with mockup text. ONly when you're happy should you think about the Wordpress part.

If you search with Google you'll find plenty of pages on creating your own Wordpress theme or converting HTML to a theme.