Has anyone here done a WP theme?

eurotrash · January 19, 2011, 11:33:05 AM

I have a project I want to do in the next few months that involves doing a theme from scratch in quite a different way that hasn't been done before for a specific group of people.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of doing one from scratch rather than editing a custom one.

Adam C · January 19, 2011, 11:44:33 AM

I had a stab at one a few years ago and it turned out to be more fiddly than I was expecting.

A waste of my time personally, but someone with the right skill-set wouldn't have any such trouble.

Leona · January 19, 2011, 02:46:41 PM

Yes I have what do you need to know?

Rumbas · January 19, 2011, 04:10:48 PM

We're doing quite a few for our own stuff. Ditto, waddayneed?

eurotrash · January 19, 2011, 09:17:13 PM

Leona and Rumbas - I've PMd you.

4Eyes · January 20, 2011, 05:51:59 AM

I have used 'Artisteer' to create a few themes from scratch - its a pretty good way to get a theme 'nearly there' before finishing it off by hand.

eurotrash · January 20, 2011, 01:00:19 PM

Thanks 4Eyes - I will give that a spin in the next couple of days. Clicking on their site also led me to Riffly which is also extremely helpful and I'd never heard of B4.

Ta.

ergophobe · January 20, 2011, 09:50:16 PM

I've also used Artisteer, but must say that you can spot an Artisteer site in two seconds (nobody else knows - did a "site" if you can call it that in 20 minutes and people told me what an amazing design pro I was).

I've also done some themes from scratch a long time back because I wanted content-first source ordering and couldn't find any themes that had that.

That said, these days for cheap and quick, I like to just use Flexibility Theme. It was free until recently, but now it's a mere $47 for pretty much unrestricted use on as many domains as you want.

Within limits, it lets you mix up layout, use eyedroppers to change colors and create a fairly custom look fairly quickly. If you're looking for something highly specific (i.e. not just a custom look, but custom function) it may not be the thing, but generally I find the thing to be a cheap and easy WP toolkit.

PS - it also has built AdSense integration that lets you inject AS in various places. Not super advanced, but not bad either.

Torben · January 20, 2011, 09:58:33 PM

It's not that hard to code a WP theme. I recommend that you take a look at the default TwentyTen theme in WordPress

eurotrash · January 21, 2011, 07:41:50 AM

Thanks ergo I had a look at Artisteer yesterday when 4Eyes mentioned it - nice resource. Torben - Thats exactly what I was doing last night and flashing back and forth to the codex - to be honest spent more time in codex - what I want to do is kind of different from a normal theme.

Code · January 22, 2011, 07:16:06 PM

I've done a couple over time, and I must say as far as skinning Wordpress goes, it can be a bit time consuming, however if you have a set goal of what features your blog etc is going to have you can cut out some time like that, but honestly it's still likely best to get the theme fully complete. As long as you know some basic php and HTML you won't have an issue on the technical side however, but when it comes to time... well that's something only you know how much you have of!

Drastic · January 25, 2011, 07:32:59 PM

To bang out something quick and dirty, this is pretty cool:
http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/

I've also heard good things about Artisteer, for quick and pretty, but can be code-heavy IIRC.