Do I need to know extensive PHP to create a theme?

  • I’m wanting to create my own WP theme (for personal use). I’m fairly acquainted with HTML and CSS, but only recently realised that WP themes require PHP, too.

    1. How much PHP do I need to know? I was trying to learn some on Code Academy, but their PHP section is rubbish and keeps crashing – can anyone recommend any other PHP resources with a built in live preview for you to practice while you learn?

    2. Can anyone recommend a text editor that lets you live preview PHP? I’m currently using Adobe’s brackets, but it has its flaws in this section.

    Thanks in advance!

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  • Well the short answer is Yes, you need to be comfortable with PHP if you intend to build a theme from scratch.

    As far as learning, me personally I still enjoy reading books. Heres a new php for beginners book coming out next month by Apress: https://www.amazon.com/PHP-Absolute-Beginners-Jason-Lengstorf/dp/1430268158/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406746317&sr=1-5&keywords=php+beginners

    If you looking for online maybe checkout linda.com or im sure you can find something just searching online.

    For your other question, at the end of the day use the one you like. I also did not like brackets. I like sublimetext.com (all platforms) and also notepad-plus-plus.org (windows only) or geany.org (linux).

    But these are just text editors. Im not sure what you would mean by live preview of PHP. What php outputs is generally functionality not cosmetics so you need to run (view in browser) your php to see/test the results.

    Hope that helps.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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