WordPress Theme Design is 75% CSS

I was chatting with Liz Strauss today, and amidst our conversation, I made the point that WordPress theme design is 75% CSS. What exactly does this mean? You might be asking yourself this question.

Well, we all know that WordPress themes are comprised of various parts, such as the loop. (You can read all about the dissection of a WordPress Theme right here.) And although that series was written over two years ago, it accurately describes the gist of how a WordPress theme is comprised.

Even though there is a lot of knowledge to be had regarding the anatomy of a WordPress theme, there’s something I want to share with all of you who are considering your first attempts at customizing a WordPress theme.

WordPress Theme Design is 75% CSS.

If the basic core structure of a theme is intact, a majority of the coding involved to create a unique WordPress theme lies within the stylesheet it is associated with. A better way of explaining this can be found on a comment I left on my friend Randa’s blog, when she posted about the First Steps of Designing a WordPress Theme:

Since it’s pretty darn near impossible to write every piece of PHP and CSS from scratch, I started with the default WordPress theme and began to modify it. I did this because I knew functionally everything was stable. I rewrote how the CSS appeared in the file, as well as how the PHP was laid out as well. Then I obliterated the style sheet so that my theme was no longer able to be compared to the original one.

If you are feeling adventurous, and want to dive into the WordPress theme design pool, my strongest piece of advice is to learn and understand how CSS works.

And although I make the point that most of designing a theme lies within the stylesheet, I am NOT encouraging you to take a public theme, change a few of the CSS elements and claim it as your own. You will need to do more work than that to ensure it can be considered truly your own.

Posted May 4, 2007 by Brian Gardner | Filed Under Blog 

Comments

7 Responses to “WordPress Theme Design is 75% CSS”

  1. Randa Clay on May 5th, 2007 4:37 am

    Nice post Brian. I’m almost finished with my first theme, and I actually thought it would be more complicated somehow.

  2. franky on May 5th, 2007 7:01 am

    and claim it as your own
    Which will sadly happen more and more with the rise in GPL licenses.

  3. Brian Gardner on May 5th, 2007 6:44 pm

    Randa, can’t wait to see it! Franky, yes, this happens, and unfortunately it has happened to me. Not fun!

  4. Nathan Rice on May 6th, 2007 12:14 pm

    Brian,
    This is so true! I remember the first theme I did. I didn’t even touch any of the markup or WP code. I took Cory’s theme and started playing with the CSS. What I ended up with was completely different than his original theme.

    Crazy how just one little file can make such a difference! I guess that’s the great thing about CSS.

    Nathan

  5. Charls on May 6th, 2007 10:57 pm

    I use one of your themes on my site and have modified a few things, far from anything that I could call my own. I did, in the footer put modified by “me”. The reason I did this was not to claim the theme as my own, but rather to let people know the reason why it does not validate is my own fault and not yours, never was it my intention to get any type of recognition for the theme at all. In other words I didn’t want you to get any bad reviews for your themes, since they are exceptional.

    So my question is, should I take out the modified bit by me, and just leave it as is?

    P.S the reason it doesnt validate is when I started to put affiliate referral codes in, previously to this it validated fine.

  6. Brian Gardner on May 7th, 2007 3:43 am

    Charls - it’s not necessary for you to remove your name. What I am referring to is the fact that some people try to release themes that designers make freely to the public under their own name, in order to reap the benefits of incoming links and the publicity that free themes can offer. In your case, I appreciate that you left my link, and noted that you can had changed it. Totally fine!

  7. Charls on May 11th, 2007 5:48 am

    thanks for clearing that up for me :)

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