{"id":89,"date":"2009-10-21T18:21:34","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T18:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/?p=89"},"modified":"2009-10-23T16:10:02","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T16:10:02","slug":"wordpress-themes-more-difficult-than-i-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/2009\/wordpress-themes-more-difficult-than-i-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Themes – basics from square one"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t think getting the WordPress theme to my liking\u00a0would be\u00a0a long job. I’ve revised my thinking since.<\/p>\n

What’s a Theme? The theme defines how the blog looks, its the page design that then calls up the content from the entries made in the database.\u00a0\u00a0That’s the first bit I had to learn.<\/p>\n

There’s more than one page design. The actual number of page types can vary according to the theme. Each page\u00a0is made up from sections (or areas)\u00a0that are called up. e.g. Header, content, comments, side bar, footer. The pages and sections of pages are defined in .php files<\/p>\n

Each section (or area) is made up with some common elements e.g. Text styles, colours. These elements are defined in Style Sheets. The style sheets are .css files<\/p>\n

So to change the overall look – I need to start at the lowest level and work my way up<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. .css\u00a0stylesheets, will change appearances all the way up<\/li>\n
  2. .php sections, will change the content of\u00a0sections (or areas)<\/li>\n
  3. .php templates (pages), will change how the .php sections\u00a0are\u00a0put together to make a page<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So it looks like I’ve got to get a good grasp of CSS and PHP. This is not going to be easy!<\/p>\n

    There are however, alternatives<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. There are loads of free themes available to download<\/li>\n
    2. There are themes available to purchase<\/li>\n
    3. There are designers out there who will put a bespoke theme together<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I had a look at some of the free themes, they are easy to download as zip file then open up through the WordPress dashboard.\u00a0 Of the five I’ve looked at\u00a0two came up with errors, when it’s free you take your chance. There is one I quite like\u00a0that\u00a0says it’s optimised for SEO and AdWords.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Before I look at buying\u00a0or commissioning a theme I’m going to have play at customising this. Two goals in mind, getting the right look for my blog\u00a0and learning some of the programming involved.<\/p>\n

      Before I dive into it using the theme editor on WordPress I’ll investigate what off-line options are available.<\/p>\n

      Update:\u00a0 I’ve had a good look round and found a few options.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Highly Recomended<\/strong> – www.yvoschaap.com\/wpthemegen\/<\/a>\u00a0This is free on-line generator\u00a0. I really wish I had found this a few days ago. In fact I might give it ago as the code for Theme I’m working on seems to be all over the place. <\/em><\/p>\n

      www.artisteer.com<\/a>\u00a0Downloadable 1month free trial\u00a0software<\/em><\/p>\n

      www.themedreamer.com<\/a> This is plugin for Dreamweaver so Themes can be worked on easily with WYSIWIG.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      What’s a Theme? The theme defines how the blog looks, its the page design that then calls up the content from the entries made in the database.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25,38,15,41,40,39,19],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ido-digitalmarketing-stuff","tag-advice","tag-basic","tag-beginner","tag-free","tag-modification","tag-themes","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idostuff.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}