Learn Theme Development

Read these tutorials to learn how to create custom WordPress themes. If you want to be a WordPress theme developer, you'll learn everything you need to know.

All Theme Development tutorials:

  1. More Tips for Best Practices in WordPress Development

    More Tips for Best Practices in WordPress Development

    Tutorial Beginner

    Welcome to the second part of the series. On the first article we explained the WordPress Coding Standards, how to avoid namespaces collisions, comments in...

  2. Writing Maintainable WordPress Themes: Naming Conventions

    Writing Maintainable WordPress Themes: Naming Conventions

    Tutorial Beginner

    In the first post in this series, we reviewed some of the strategies that are available as it relates to organizing our WordPress theme directories in order...

  3. Taxonomy Archives: List Posts by a Second Taxonomy's Terms

    Taxonomy Archives: List Posts by a Second Taxonomy's Terms

    Tutorial Intermediate

    If your site uses multiple taxonomies to categorize information, it can be helpful to split up posts in a taxonomy archive by the terms of a second taxonomy....

  4. Creating an FAQ Page Using Two Loops

    Creating an FAQ Page Using Two Loops

    Tutorial Intermediate

    A page of frequently asked questions will be much more user-friendly if your visitors can see all of the questions at the top of the page and then go to the...

  5. Using the TGM Plugin Activation Library in Your Themes

    Using the TGM Plugin Activation Library in Your Themes

    Tutorial Intermediate

    Themes aren't meant to be functional, but as theme developers, we mostly need to include some features to make our theme a bit better and a function, you...

  6. Steps to Becoming a Quality WordPress Theme Developer

    Steps to Becoming a Quality WordPress Theme Developer

    Tutorial Beginner

    Have you ever found asking: how do Premium WordPress theme authors achieve million dollar milestones? How do they come up with such amazing designs and...

  7. How to Use WordPress Color Picker API

    How to Use WordPress Color Picker API

    Tutorial Beginner

    When the WordPress team releases a new version, they introduce some new features not only for users but for developers, as well. WordPress offers a lot of...

  8. The Beginner's Guide to Icon Fonts in WordPress

    The Beginner's Guide to Icon Fonts in WordPress

    Tutorial Intermediate

    I like social icons, I'll admit it. I have literally dozens of social icon sets I've collected over the last few years, and have even created a few sets of...

  9. Creating a WordPress Theme from Static HTML: Adding Featured Images

    Creating a WordPress Theme from Static HTML: Adding Featured Images

    Tutorial Intermediate

    You've now worked through a number of steps to create a WordPress theme from static HTML files. Specifically, we've looked covered the following: ...

  10. Custom Controls in the Theme Customizer

    Custom Controls in the Theme Customizer

    Tutorial Beginner

    In the last article, we explored the advanced controls available in the Theme Customizer, and how to implement them. We’re going to look at how to create...

  11. Creating a WordPress Theme from Static HTML - Creating a Page Template

    Creating a WordPress Theme from Static HTML - Creating a Page Template

    Tutorial Intermediate

    So far in this series, I've shown you how to create a fully functioning WordPress theme from static HTML. We've covered the following steps: preparing...

  12. Creating a WordPress Theme From Static HTML: The Footer File

    Creating a WordPress Theme From Static HTML: The Footer File

    Tutorial Intermediate

    In this series, you've been learning how to create a WordPress theme form static HTML. Up to this point, you have: prepared your markup for WordPress ...