10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes

Being able to design custom WordPress themes is almost a must for today’s web designers. The fun thing with WordPress is that there’s always something new that you can learn to make the platform work better for you and your clients. These 10 tutorials will teach basic WordPress theming as well as some more advanced skills.

1- How to Create WordPress Themes from Scratch

Kai Loon wrote this popular series (see parts 1, 2, 3a, and 3b). It’s very detailed and covers designing the theme in Photoshop, slicing and coding, and all of the files involved in the theme. If your looking for a great guide to take you through the etire process of desigining and coding, this is a good place to start.

2- Build a Newspaper Theme with WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework

For a non-traditional or magazine-style layout, this tutorial will take you through the specific WordPress coding that’s involved and you’ll create a simple, but attractive, sample layout.

3- So You Want to Create WordPress Themes Huh?

Small Potato wrote a detail 16-part series on all aspects of theme development. Most of the individual sections of the theme are not that long, so 16 parts isn’t as intimidating or time-consuming as it may seem.

4- Developing a WordPress Theme

Deziner Folio did a tutorial that covers the basics of the header, sidebar, footer and index files. This one is not as in-depth as some of the others on this list, but it is a good place to get a quicker understanding of theme development.

5- How to Create a WordPress Template or Theme

This tutorial from Aneko Studios was one of the first ones I read on WordPress theme development. It covers the different files that make up the WordPress theme and the basic coding that is involved with each.

6- Build a Basic Newspaper Layout with WordPress and jQuery

This is another excellent tutorial from NETTUTS for building a different newspaper layout. Of course, it covers all the coding of the various WP files involved.

7- Designing for WordPress

Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks has a three-part video series for downloading and installing WordPress, all the way through everything else involved with designing a custom theme. The example theme that is built through the series is a personalized homepage theme.

8- How to Make a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme

While there are plenty of good tutorials for designing and coding themes, there are very few that touch on the process of creating a control panel. This one from Cats Who Code takes you through the process, as used in the Mimbo theme.

9- How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch

NETTUTS has a two-part series (see parts 1 and 2) that’s a good resource for new theme developers. It cover the basic files of the theme, including CSS, and the tutorial walks through the development of a basic sample theme.

10- Dissection of a WordPress Theme

An older tutorial, but still relevant, this is an in-depth series from Urban Giraffe (See parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) that will take you through the entire process of developing a WordPress theme, with plenty of explanation to go along with the code samples.