Lesson 1: Themes vs. Websites

What’s the difference between a theme and a website? In this course we will be building a theme in its purest sense: a skin for WordPress websites that plays nicely with WordPress’ native content types, and can be changed at a user’s will without compensating the integrity of their data.

Week One Live Session: Thursday, May 26

Watch the replay:


Lesson Plan

  1. The difference between themes and websites
    1. Installing themes vs. building websites
    2. A theme should be able to be changed
  2. Themes, themes, themes! Different types and how to customize them.
    1. Installing free themes from the repository and look at customization options
    2. Use Jetpack Custom CSS tool
    3. Create a child theme from a free theme
    4. Genesis and theme frameworks (and their dangers)
    5. Look at a premium theme (Climate25 with August and others) with a page builder and too many options - bad news bears!!
  3. Lara’s philosophy regarding theme development, and the proper way to develop custom themes
    1. Content focused
    2. For a specific use case, think: farmer's market, portfolio, restaurant
  4. A recap of our project and overview of the WordPress repository theme guidelines
  5. Listing requirements for your theme and planning for them
  6. Get started! Set up your development environment.
    1. Install WordPress within MAMP
    2. Install the Underscores starter theme
    3. Create a Git repository to track our changes

Complete and Continue