Getting Started

  • Hello. I searched through for a while and I wasn’t able to find my specific question.

    I am new to dynamic site design. The only knowledge i have is html and css. I’m trying to figure out how to use wordpress as a cms and how to develop themes from scratch. I have searched online, watched videos at lynda.com, and read a couple of dummies books. But I don’t seem to have enough basic knowledge to know where to start. I don’t have the money to take classes on this stuff, so any guidance will be appreciated.

    How can I go from being an html and css editor to being a php/mysql/.net/asp/wordpress/etc. WIZARD?

    What did you do to get where you are? What did the pros do?

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  • I would start with first setting up an XAMPP server on your computer, this gives you a nice playground for experimenting with wordpress and themes without being on a live server.

    Nice tutorial here:
    https://www.thespinningdonut.com/setting-up-wordpress-on-your-pc/

    Once you do that, then take the default 2010 theme and look at the different parts of it. You’ll see basically what you have is an html template broken up into 6-10 different files (ie: header.php, index.php, single.php, page.php, footer.php, sidebar.php).

    The html/css is the same – what’s different is that instead where there are normally words, you have php code…so instead of displaying “Hello World!” as the post title it will show `<php the_title()? >

    From there it is just about trial and error and messing around with various tutorials online – for example you can experiment with making posts loop based on categories or start writing your own wordpress functions/filters/hooks. (See the WordPress Codex and read and re-read it until you can quote it verbatim, lol). It is helpful to study other themes and plugins too. WordPress is GPL, so often times you can copy/paste/alter pretty much anything that already exists – no need to start completely from scratch.

    If there’s someone locally near you who can show the ins and outs of coding wordpress that can be helpful too ??

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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