What is the best way of starting a new wordpress theme? – CMS & WordPress – SitePoint Forums

Hello. So I have made 2 wordpress themes now. One I followed a tutorial and it was basically from scratch but the video did most of the programming. The other I made a while back and I think I used a child theme. – My question is, what is the best way of starting a wordpress theme? I think it would probably be a child theme. Could I get a recommendation of one if so? Maybe there is another method I am not thinking of.

Thanks!

It depends what you mean by “best” – easiest, quickest, most efficient?

A child theme is probably easier to create as you’re effectively modifying another theme, but it will be less efficient when running as it has two sets of scripts and styles to check.

I’m mainly interested in easiest right now. I think I’m just kind of asking “what does everybody do?” – Could you link to a good child theme? – Wouldn’t you take out the code you are not using thus solving the problem of two sets of scripts? Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

Thank you.

What constitutes a “good” child theme is going to depend on what type of website you are creating and what parent theme you decide to use.

Check out the WordPress manual on child themes.

Hi,

One way I’ve done this is I first make a static web page using html5 and css3. I also layout images and placeholders for video. I add the navigation too.

Then I switch the .html files to .php files. I will start separating the static code into the WordPress template files. I make sure to add quite a few actions and filters where appropriate. I document all of these so I can give a list of them for plug-in developers.

As quickly as possible I try to get an activiatable theme and continue to add widgetized zones.