Custom templates

  • Hey everybody,

    I’m a graphic designer and new WordPress user, wondering how much knowledge is needed to create custom templates from scratch without much programming experience. I know basic html, and own GoLive CS2 if that helps (though I know very little about the latter). An example of the level of customization I’m looking for is here:

    https://www.beastieboys.com/

    I am pretty sure this site uses WordPress for the main blog. If WordPress requires too much programming to use my own designs, can someone recommend something I could implement without learning CSS or PHP or something like that? I looked at blogger.com but that seemed even more complicated than WordPress. I’d appreciate some help, thanks!

    cheers,

    Adam

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • Cal

    (@themesbycal)

    Almost all of the CMS and Blogging platforms available use CSS for the themes. You almost have to know it if you want to mod or create a theme. You don’t really need to know php, but CSS is pretty much necessary.

    Hope that helps.

    Thread Starter adweinbe

    (@adweinbe)

    Thanks for the help. Do you possibly know of any good resources for learning CSS?

    Cal

    (@themesbycal)

    Great Forums, Articles, Books and Videos
    https://www.sitepoint.com

    There are literally hundreds of great sites with CSS tutorials and articles. I would suggest just going to our great friend Google for more resources.

    Hope that helps

    Thread Starter adweinbe

    (@adweinbe)

    Sure does, I appreciate it!

    I found that playing with the CSS present on wordpress themes taught me the fastest. If I got stuck I’d go research what I was stuck on!

    You quickly learn what does what with a live example, theory and practice together.

    Thread Starter adweinbe

    (@adweinbe)

    that’s exactly what i thought to do, and how i learned HTML. when you say you played with “the CSS present on wordpress” .. what is this exactly? everything i downloaded says PHP, and when i go to edit these files in GoLive, it’s a bunch of programming nonsense to me, i have no idea where to start ….

    1. Edit the WP files only in a plain text editor.
    2. Every WordPress theme (not template!) is built from several template (.php) files AND a CSS file – style.css.

    The template files are (X)HTML files with PHP snippets in between for retrieving the data from the database. They are called template tags.
    The Codex, the online manual can be of great help for understanding the theme system:
    Theme_Development

    I would too like to design my own wp-theme but, I don’t know pHp well enough yet. I just started reading and doing online tutorials 2 days ago.

    But to mOd someone else’s theme is this c00l to do ?

    Depending on the license – most of the themes are GPL, meaning you can freely modify them… of course, a reference to the original author in the stylesheet MUST be left there.
    It is a great way to learn your way in theme design to start with an existing theme.

    OK Thanks for the inFo.

    Another great source for learning css is: https://w3schools.com/css/default.asp

    Cal

    (@themesbycal)

    And let’s not forget…..

    https://csszengarden.com

    ??

    Thread Starter adweinbe

    (@adweinbe)

    Awesome, thanks for the great resources!

    Thread Starter adweinbe

    (@adweinbe)

    Quick related question — right now, the big thing i want to do is simply change the column widths for the default WordPress blog layout. What files should I edit to change this? I searched a bunch of them and couldn’t find what I would think would be obvious attributes.

    At the moment my plan is to insert a WordPress blog into an existing design (w/o learning CSS or PHP for now) by creating an html “inframe” and linking to the blog from within the page. The thing is, I need to shrink the praportions of the blog / column dimensions to have it work within the design. Does this sound feasible??

    1. If you are a beginner – do NOT touch the default theme. Sorry, it is not easy to modify.
    2. Embedding WP in an iframe has nothing to do with your initial question (=designing a custom theme/template).
    2a. It’s a very bad solution putting it into an iframe but someone else might have some good advice how to do it. (I don’t know anything about frames because I can’t stand them.)

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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