Book Review: WordPress Theme Design
WordPress Theme Design – A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes – By Tessa Blakeley Silver
WordPress is my favorite application. I love it. I use it both as a blogging platform, and as a CMS for sites. I love the ease in which I can create professional sites, and the options of I have in the way of free and premium themes. I also like that there are 1000′s of plugins to add functionality to my sites.
When it comes to WordPress themes, I consider myself an intermediate user. I can alter aspects of other people themes to my liking, and I know what the structure of a WordPress theme looks like: PHP files, what roughly to expect in each one + a CSS file.
However, I hadn’t ever considered that I would have the skill to create a WordPress theme from scratch. That is until I read this book. So if you are like me and you fancy yourself a bit of a part time designer / coder but need a little more guidance, then go for it, this book will really help your in your goal towards creating your own WordPress theme from scratch.
What’s in this book?
It serves both as a good reference material for someone learning theme design and a good cover to cover read for someone who wants to try creating a theme using the example provided.
What you will need to know?
A bit about WordPress, how to install themes and what theme files look like and some basic CSS. Essentially this book is for visual designers who are used to working with the common industry-standard tools like PhotoShop and Dreamweaver or other popular graphic, HTML, and text editors.
An Approach to Design – Rapid Design Comping
The author of this book Tessa Blakeley Silver, works through a design method referred to as “Rapid Design Comping”, which is a method of design where essentially you design visually in a graphic editor such as Photoshop. This is a professional design method, valid for any designer.
Step by Step approach
The guts of this book is a walk through giving the actual steps to make a professional theme. The author uses the creation of a professional newspaper type theme to illustrate her example. Along with a generic process that could be used to create a standard CSS based web template the author delves deeper into the specifics of designing for WordPress, with information about “The Loop” and how to separate your theme into template files for WordPress.
What I think about it
I am very happy to have this book in my collection. It gave me the resource I required to step away from other people themes, and design my own from scratch which really felt like a great achievement. The book is well written, organised and very relevant. I love this sort of thing, and this book will be kept as a resource material for some time to come.
Buy this book now from Packtpub
Tags: Design, Wordpress Themes
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Comments (43)
It is about time. I have been wanting to create my own WP themes for some time now and have been wanting a book on this subject. I am one of those people who learn best when it is in a book in my hands so I will be heading over to get a copy.
Great book review ! I guess i really need that book. I don’t know much about WordPress Theme Design. I think its better to know it. Thanks for the information.
Checking out this book now. I also wanted to create good wordpress themes and want to share it to world for free. Thanks a lot!
PacktPub publishes some great books. I am an author for them and find them to be a great company to work for.
It’s nice to see book has been made on this very popular topic. It proves how WordPress is not stopping its evolution and popularity. I’ve seen many tutorials on web on how to design wordpress themes, but i am sure there are many people like me, who like to read from paper more…
Hey Simon thanks for the heads up on this book. I am fairly new to WordPress and I have only had a blog since last October. I am trying to learn what I can about the medium and I am really excited about it so far. It is insane how easy it is to set up a blog and be publishing online. Why doesn’t everybody do this?
Anyway I am currently reading WordPress for Dummies and when I get done I will get this from amazon.
Thanks again.
It looks like a very interesting book. I believe, at least in Spain, that there was none on wordpress.
To have when this book comes to Spain. WordPress every day is more an acquaintance and used.
sounds like a great book, All I want to learn is more about php, Just like you said we also have the same concept when it comes to wordpress, I just alter the aspects of other people themes to my liking, like just changing the header and modifying the width and margins from the css. Maybe this is the time I can manage to create my own. Thanks Simon for sharing the book.
Finaly everything in one place. I mean it’s nice that there are tutorials for everything on the tubes but one: you need to find them and second you need to know what you’re looking for.
I don’t have the courage to create a theme from scratch, good for you! Thanks anyway..
If a really interesting book, I liked will have in spanish
I need to learn WordPress more. I can install and operate, but can’t modify/create my own themes, but that would be cool. Do you have to know any PHP in order to create your own theme, or is it mostly CSS?
wwow nice book theme preview , thanks for the post.
Is there a digital version of this? Looks nice!
@Oly – Yes there is a pdf version from PacktPub.
Hey!
Nice recommendation, I am looking for this kind of book, Thanks for sharing us.
Im reading all i can about WP, love it! thanks for your way of creating theme designs..
I would love to create them from scratch! Great Info! Thanks for posting this
Same here I am not creating WP themes from scratch. I usually use Kubrick and/or other themes as a pattern but I will your recommended book, I might change my mind too.
Hi.
I have been looking for a long time something like that. You know, I`m working with WordPress
too, and creating themes for this blog is very interesting for me. Thanks!!
I would come here more often
Some nice review. I’m thinking about creating a new Theme Design, so I guess I have to add this book to my collection as well.
So you think this would be a good book for a beginner? Sounds like something I’d like to try!
Tina, the book does ask that you know a little about themes, and what structure they have etc, and that you can use applications like dreamweaver and Photoshop. So it may not be the best for you if you don’t know how to use these.
Hi: nice post,that is really great recommendation, I’d like to read a little bit early this book.Thanks sharing.
I was actually just at the library the other day looking for a book just like this. Thanks for the recommend!
I purchased this book about 2 months ago, while I haven’t built a theme from scratch with it. I did learn a little from it & may yet build a theme. I found a premade theme, that fit my needs after a little tweaking, right after the book came in, so I lost interest.
Wow. It never occurred to me to even consider making my own WordPress themes either to make money off of or just for my own blogs. I guess I was always too lazy in the brain to even let the thought develop in my brain lol!
Do you think they would have this book at the library? I might have to make some time to check it out, I can def see the appeal of designing one of a kind WordPress themes.
I would think that could seriously boost the ability to make money online, if you can create good themes that is
Looks like I have to get it. A theme from scratch sound great for me.
Not only are some of the most important generalities skipped over in favour of currently-trendy specifics, this book suffers terribly from not having been proofread or copyedited. What information there is inside would have been more useful if delivered more coherently, and if I drop £15 on a book I expect it not to be riddled with grammatical errors and bad punctuation. As you say, I’d have been better spending the same money printing out a bunch of web articles. Still, you live and learn, I guess… at least I can write it off against my tax.
Sweet! Now I’ll feel guilty if I don’t get it because I’m lousy with modifying WordPress themes. I really need some instruction!
Nice Review.
Seems like a really nice and helpful book, and obviously there is no denying the power and value of wordpress themes in SEO.
WordPress is a great platform to use and even better when you can design themes yourself.
Thanks i will have to get this book now. I wanted to learn how to design some of my own wordpress themes and this sounds like the book i need to read.
Thanks i likethe fact they go step by step and show how they make the theme. I have to buy this book i need to learn how to make own wordpress themes soon.
hmmmmm According to your post its looking nice book. I will try it definitely.
Thanks that sounds like a good design guide. Wanted to learn more and the step by step feature sounds like what i need.
That is a good book to learn how to design your own wordpress themes. Most people will be able to design own themes after reading it. It does have some great guides in it.
Thanks i will have to get this book. Sounds like a must read for anyone who wants to make own wordpress themes. Your review made me interested in the book because of the fact they go through the process of making the teme not just describe it.
It helped my husband design my theme, which I love. WordPress is a great platform to build a site on.
“However, I hadn’t ever considered that I would have the skill to create a WordPress theme from scratch. That is until I read this book.”
Like you, I like WordPress too. The choices for themes are really excellent. But I would like to install a particular theme for my blog. Thanks for sharing the info about this book. Is there an online version of this book?
This book is fantastic. I am a beginning WordPress blog developer and needed something other than [...] Codex to help me understand the intricacies of creating a [...]. Silver helped me with my own design process which was a bit jumbled before reading the book. WordPress Theme Design is concise and takes you step by step through the process of creating a blog; although you must know some CSS, XHTML and PHP before you can fully understand the blogs innards. It’ll just make more sense while reading if you have some idea of what you are reading.
I have about 15 websites made with WordPress and customized. Tessa Blakeley Silver seems to be a real expert in WordPress customization. I was thinking I know the code and the possibilities but this book shows me that I was wrong. If you need to know how to change your classic WordPress blog and to transform into a powerful website, this book is clear for you.
I use a lot of wordpress themes, but it is difficult to find a theme that fits our demands. Learning to create a theme seems to be the best solution. I will be considering in bying this book. Thanks!