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How to get started with WordPress Theme development

Samuel Nitsche on July 16, 2020

Hey WordPress development folks, I'm mainly a backend and database developer and the last time I dealt with PHP was roughly 7-10 years ago. I want ...
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keralpatel profile image
Keral. Patel. •

I don't think that there's any other better way to get started than reverse engineering an existing theme and playing with it's code to understand the structure.

There are many free/gpl licensed themes out there. You can get started with those very easily.

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pesse profile image
Samuel Nitsche •

Thanks for the encouraging words.
The coding is not the problem, the tooling around the development is what I'm looking for guidance ☺️

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katiekodes profile image
Katie •

Bookmarked because I'm in the same boat as you (though leaning towards moving from WP to SSG development because some of the "coding" is so much simpler).

That said, I wouldn't dive into Wordpress these days without learning about writing Gutenberg blocks to better control the CMS look and feel itself.

I feel like just developing themes might be a little bit of an old-school mindset?

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pesse profile image
Samuel Nitsche •

What is SSG?
WordPress is a precondition for my use-case, because of the many very good PlugIns for interactive stuff (booking, calendar etc.)
Not going to work as WordPress developer, so I might have a different situation :)

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katiekodes profile image
Katie • • Edited

A static site generator.

I'm not sure I'm going to need so many plug-ins for my next project if I choose the right SSG and CMS combo. Just a couple of for loops surrounding HTML blocks here and there.

Not to send you down a rabbit hole...

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txndai profile image
GT Fari •

css-tricks.com/where-to-learn-word...

I found this to be a helpful place to start

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • • Edited

Although you can indeed install WordPress within a folder, then run globally, I would love to run it within Docker. (which is not WordPress problem, but PHP problem.)

I believe there is WordPress plugin to view that website's source code including PHP.

Also, if you want to use composer, I believe there is WordPress fork. Forgot the name, sry.

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pesse profile image
Samuel Nitsche •

Hm, I tried out that one here yesterday and it seemed to work pretty okay. The only thing I need to add is to make the wordpress folder also a volume so I can access it easily from my PC:
docs.docker.com/compose/wordpress/

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polyrenn profile image
Niyi •

roots.io/sage/ Might be a good fit. Comes bundled with webpack and browsersync, all you'll need to automate your workflow. I think a couple starter themes in there as well if you look around the site.

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sumitpathak1 profile image
Sumit Pathak •

I think this might be helpful udemy.com/share/101YBi/

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nparekh1979 profile image
nparekh1979 •

I am learning to build wordpress themes from youtube. Can I ask you a question as I am stuck in the beginning of a very long playlist?