If you have been trying to develop a WordPress then this post will help you start developing WordPress theme from scratch locally on your system. I going to use Linux Ubuntu but the process of developing a WordPress theme on any operating system is the same; its just the WordPress local installation differs. And this is why I am going to include two video walk through in this post below that’ll help you download and install latest version of WordPress on Your Windows and Ubuntu.
If you own a Mac, you should install XAMPP and launch the XAMPP control panel to start apache and mysql server and follow the WordPress installation on Windows.
Download and Install WordPress on Windows 10
Download and Install WordPress on Ubuntu
WordPress Starter Theme
There are many WordPress starter themes that are freely available and some are paid with a few additional features.
If you would like to start with a starter them then I would recommend the Underscores dot me (_S) repository which maintained by the company behind WordPress, which is Automatic. Though it is opensource.
Underscores Starter Theme Intro
This video covers how underscores starter theme puts things together and what you get with underscores starter theme.
WordPress Theme Development from Scratch
Now, I am going to focus on developing WordPress theme scratch and this will help you understand how a blogging WordPress theme can be developed. I will also cover how WordPress Plugin work and will create a WordPress plugin with some basic functionality too.
Create Your WordPress Theme
To create a custom WordPress theme, we need to create a folder under /wp-content/themes/theme_name
/wp-content/themes/your_theme_name/and a few required files; sytel.css, index.php, and functions.php
your_theme$ touch style.css index.php functions.phpWe define WordPress theme meta data in /style.css and that too as css multi line comment
/*
Theme Name: Your Theme Name
Theme URI: Your_theme_url
Author: Your Full Name
Author URI: Your Profile Link
Description: You can describe your theme's features here
Tags: Your, can, put, theme's, features, like, this
Version: 1.0
Requires at least: 5.0
Tested up to: 5.4
Requires PHP: 7.0
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Text Domain: yourthemename
*/Everything above is self explanatory but if you need any explanation please ask them in the comment below.
Now, save your /style.css and check your theme should pop up in your WordPress dashboard appearance section.
Now you can activate your theme and view the front end your WordPress that must be completely blank.
Blank because we don’t have anything in our /index.php and /functions.php