In Detail This title will take you through the ins and outs of creating sophisticated professional themes for the WordPress personal publishing platform. It will walk you through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom WordPress theme. From development tools and setting up your WordPress sandbox, through design tips and suggestions, to setting up your theme's template structure, coding markup, testing and debugging, to taking it live it reviews the best practices. The last three chapters are dedicated to additional tips, tricks and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to your WordPress theme designs using third-party plugins. Whether you're working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Theme Design will give you the know-how to understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system, enabling you to take full control over your site's design and branding. What you will learn from this book? - Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design
- Create detailed designs and code them up
- Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics
- Debug and validate your theme using W3C's XHTML and CSS validation tools
- Customize and tweak your theme's layout
- Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms
- Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme
- Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox
- Add interactivity to your themes using Flash
- Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0's template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions
Approach Theme design can be approached from two angles. The first is simplicity; sometimes it suits the client and/or the site to go as bare-bones as possible. In that case, it's quick and easy to take a very basic, pre-made theme and modify it. The second is "Unique and Beautiful". Occasionally, the site's theme needs to be created from scratch so that everything displayed caters to the specific kind of content the site offers. This book is going to take you through the Unique and Beautiful route with the idea that once you know how to create a theme from scratch, you'll be more apt at understanding what to look for in other WordPress themes. Who this book is written for? This book can be used by WordPress users or visual designers (with no server-side scripting or programming experience) who are used to working with the common industry-standard tools like PhotoShop and Dreamweaver or other popular graphic, HTML, and text editors. Regardless of your web development skill-set or level, you'll be walked through the clear, step-by-step instructions, but familiarity with a broad range of web development skills and WordPress know-how will allow you to gain maximum benefit from this book. |
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 Great for Aspiring WordPress Designers |
| Review Date: July 2, 2008 |
| Reviewer: E. Peck, Orlando, FL |
This is a rock solid book with great, practical advice on how to create a WordPress theme. The style is very relaxed and conversational yet to the point. I felt like the author just came by and hung out with me at my pc, teaching me how to create a WordPress theme. I've been using WordPress for years, but never had the time or discipline to track down all I would need to know to do this.
The pictures and examples are great, all the code can be downloaded from the book's web site. I learned a lot not just about designing a theme for WordPress, but also gained some great tips on working with XHTML, CSS and how to troubleshoot both as well as Java Script.
I'd say a reader wants to have some familiarity with editing text files, sending them to a server and html. I thought the book did a great job of explaining anything else that would be needed. And I mention sending files to a server - but instructions are given for installing a local setup for testing. One could learn what this book has to offer without actually sending files out to a remote host.
Just a great book that I found to be extremely helpful to someone with no web design background, but I want my blogs to be more unique. |
A Great Workflow for Theme Design
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| Review Date: January 28, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Jason, NC, USA |
Tessa has done us all a really great service by writing this book for us.
There seems to be some confusion about who the book is targeted to, and who would get the most out of this book. Let me describe a bit about what I got out of the book, my background, and why I think this is a wonderful book that you should pickup.
Some people have given this book low reviews because they think it's to complicated, others think it's too easy.
I've been designing websites since before I had a computer. I used to write code in my (paper) notebook using nothing more than an HTML reference guide (and a quick trip to the library to put in code). I started designing websites for small companies (still do), and eventually went to college to get a degree in web design.
What I love the most about this book is, Tessa doesn't waste my time explaining basic CSS, html layout, php, stuff I could care less about in a WordPress Theme Design book. Instead she jumps right in and starts teaching "the good stuff". Some people are complaining that they cant follow along, but really, if you're going to design a website, you need to sit down, learn some xhtml and css. Familiarity with php and mysql is not necessary thanks to using WordPress and this book (though a little can go a long way).
What this book does give you is a way to translate your previous webdesign skills into the "WordPress" world, as quickly, and painlessly as possible. I love it!
I really wish this resource had been available back when I started tinkering with WordPress themes a while back, and I think it can and will help anyone who wants to create a WordPress theme.
As someone who has created a theme from scratch, and who edits themes to suit clients needs, I can tell you I did get value from this book. Most of what I enjoyed was Tessa's workflow. It is so simple, so powerful, and yet, so "right".
Her "rapid design comping" is quite logical, and after reading this book, taking notes, and working on a new project, my life has become easier. I used to use a very convoluted way to create my themes, by reading this book, and using many of Tessa's frameworks, I have streamlined my own workflow and my workflow has improved.
For this and this alone, this book warrants 5 stars.
If this book had been expanded into some monolithic 400-600 page treatise covering xhtml and css along with an exhaustive copy and paste from the wordpress codex, I would of hated it, and honestly, probably wouldn't of finished it.
Instead the author focused on teaching you an efficient workflow on how to design a theme using WordPress.
If you do not know CSS, I recommend checking out "Styling With CSS" and "The Zen of CSS Design" which are both fantastic resources that can and will teach you what you need to know.
Bottom Line:
If you are new to "web design" and want to create a nice theme for your WordPress blog, have never coded (or have, but nothing professional or really "looked good") this is a great book, but you really need to pickup a CSS book and XHTML book to go along with it.
Read this book now, for a big picture overview (chapters 1-2), then learn some xhtml, so you can get the markup and the feel (don't spend to much time on it), then follow along with a nice CSS book following through the examples (spending much more time), then come back to this book. The author does give you some free resources in the book to learn more about CSS and XHTML.
If you are a designer, who knows CSS and XHTML so well they can write it on paper, you will love this book because it does not waste your time, and gets you ready and working on your theme as quickly as possible.
In all honesty, you can read chapters 1-3, then start making your theme, check back on chapter 4, validate your code (thanks for dedicating a chapter to this often overlooked aspect of webdesign), then read chapter 5 when your ready to pack up your theme. (Taking maybe 2-3 hours of your time, Tessa makes it that easy).
If you're the kinda person who could care less about creating a theme from scratch, and instead, you want to just "modify" a certain theme to make your site look better, this is a good book, you will want to read chapter 6 especially, and honestly, reading the whole book (even if just doing light reading on the first 3 chapters), and I see no reason why you cannot modify your theme, and bend it to your will. However...
If you have no CSS experience, you do need to pickup a CSS resource. And you should really know some basic XHTML (it's not complicated, really, spend an afternoon playing around with it, work through a CSS book, then come back to this book, and you're gold).
In the end, I give this book 5 stars. I got value out of it, it wasn't confusing, it improved my workflow, and I think anyone can buy this book, and make themes (maybe not right away depending on previous experience).
I would love to see a more advanced book come out later, maybe even by the same author, but in the end, this is a great book, I loved it, and I think if you approach it with an open mind (not expecting this book to cover the whole field of webdesign, and teach WordPress) you will love this book, and keep it by your desk when you work on your next project.
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Awesome Book
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| Review Date: July 7, 2008 |
| Reviewer: ChaoticFat, |
This book is fantastic. I am a beginning Wordpress blog developer and needed something other than [...] Codex to help me understand the intricacies of creating a [...]. Silver helped me with my own design process which was a bit jumbled before reading the book. Wordpress Theme Design is concise and takes you step by step through the process of creating a blog; although you must know some CSS, XHTML and PHP before you can fully understand the blogs innards. It'll just make more sense while reading if you have some idea of what you are reading.
Great book I would recommend this book to any beginner trying to understand and develop their own wordpress blogs.
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Not for the abject beginner, but a fantastic reference as I learn
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| Review Date: December 29, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Gen of www.LibraryOfEden.com, California |
I bought a premium Wordpress Theme and just wanted to learn how to tweak it a bit. I also wanted some basic familiarity with some of the language used and techniques in theme design.
From my total beginner stance, it seems like this is meant for people who are really great at coding and want to make themes from scratch, and it looks very thorough to me.
But I'm finding it a great occasional reference for when I want to do something and the internet is failing at teaching me. I have to sit down and really concentrate, and look up a lot of words, but it's simple enough that anyone truly motivated could learn to customize their theme nicely, and get a lot of background info at the same time. |
Good Book. A must for theming
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| Review Date: August 29, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Dani M., |
| I think this is a very good book, because it is the only book on theme design for WordPress. I used it together with the DVD "How to Theme WordPress" by Aleks Monahan. The topic is very hard to find practical and organized information on, so I'm very glad I found those 2 resources. The book takes longer to read and go through, so I switched from the book to the DVD to get a boost in speed, because the DVD was much easier to watch. The DVD takes 2 hours to go through, and I felt confident afterwards to go ahead and start my own project. I will likely be referring to the book later when I have more time to read it. But in general, I think the 2 go hand in hand. |
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