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WordPress Theme Development
Beginner's Guide Third Edition
Table of Contents
WordPress Theme Development
Beginner's GuideThird Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount
offers and more
Why Subscribe?
Free Access for Packt account
holders
Preface
What this book covers
Who this book is for
Conventions
Time for action – heading
What just happened?
Pop quiz – heading
Have a go hero – heading
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Getting Started as a WordPress
Theme Designer

CSS framework
960
Blueprint
Layoutcore
Setting up your WordPress sandbox
Using WAMP
Using MAMP
Choosing a hosting provider
Rolling out WordPress
Summary
2. Preparing a Design for Our
WordPress Theme
Getting ready to design
Designing in the browser
Starting our design
Planning and sketching our design
Time for action – planning our
design
What just happened?
Creating your design – from the
sketch to the screen
Time for action – creating our static
HTML file
What just happened?
The semantic body
Time for action – adding in basic
HTML structure
What just happened?
Time for action – adding in the
semantic structure

layout core to set up our positions
What just happened?
Time for Action – Adding our
media queries
What just happened?
Setting up the desktop view
Time for action – standard settings
What just happened?
Time for action – checking in on
larger desktops
What just happened?
Time for action – making sure
smaller screens are handled
What just happened?
Setting up the tablet view
Time for action – adjusting the
standard layout for tablets
What just happened?
Setting up the small screen view
Time for action – setting up our
small screen layout
What just happened?
Adding design treatments
Time for action – setting up our
graphic treatments in the stylesheet
What just happened?
Adding graphics and background
images
Setting up our background images
in our stylesheet

Building your WordPress theme
template files
Starting with a blank slate
Creating a new theme directory
Time for action – setting up our
theme directory
What just happened?
Including WordPress content
Time for action – getting your CSS
styles to show up
What just happened?
Understanding WordPress template
tags and hooks
Template tags
Hooks
Looping it! – The WordPress Loop
The Loop in a nutshell – how it
works
Time for action – creating a basic
Loop
What just happened?
Time for action – adding content
What just happened?
Time for action – adding metadata,
the timestamp, and author template tags
What just happened?
Keeping up-to-date with
WordPress
Adding to the Loop
Time for action – displaying the

WordPress theme structure
Summary
4. Advanced Theme Features
Site settings
Time for action – configuring your
site settings
What just happened?
Time for action – adding the site
title and description to your theme
What just happened?
Pretty permalinks
Time for action – setting up pretty
permalinks
What just happened?
Permalinks – a quick guide
Menus
Registering navigation menus
Time for action – registering a
navigation menu
What just happened?
Time for action – adding menus to
our theme's header.php file
What just happened?
Setting up our menu
Defining our Reading settings
Time for action – defining Reading
settings
What just happened?
Creating a menu
Time for action – creating a new

admin screen
What widgets will we need
Time for action – adding sidebar
widgets
What just happened?
Time for action – adding footer
widgets
What just happened?
Featured images
Time for action – adding featured
images to our theme
What just happened?
Time for action – adding featured
images to the site
What just happened?
Time for action – displaying
featured images differently in different
template files
What just happened?
Parent and child themes
Pop Quiz – understanding advanced
theme features
Summary
5. Debugging and Validation
Debugging and validation
workflow
Browser tools for debugging
Firefox
The Web Developer toolbar
Firebug

What just happened?
Checking your work in Internet
Explorer
Time for action – testing our theme
with BrowserLab
What just happened?
Testing on mobile devices
Summary
6. Your Theme in Action
The WordPress Theme Review
guidelines
The theme preview screenshot
Time for action – snagging a
thumbnail of your theme
What just happened?
Packaging your theme up
Tidying up your theme
Time for action – tidying up your
theme
What just happened?
Describing your theme in the
stylesheet
Time for action – describing your
theme
What just happened?
Your theme's license
Time for action – adding license
information to our theme
What just happened?
Zipping up your theme

Incorporating conditional tags in
our theme
Using conditional tags to hide the
home page's title
Time for action – using CSS to hide
our home page's title
What just happened?