Comments on: Summer Update

By: Paul Kuliniewicz

Paul Kuliniewicz — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:59:41 +0000

The page on the WordPress Codex I linked to should cover the basics, and link to the more advanced material. Looking at the code for the stock themes might help, since they shouldn’t be doing anything too crazy.

Fortunately, the way WordPress does themes, you can make a basic yet functional theme with very little code, and then build things up from there by adding new files for more specialized functions.

I highly suggest setting up a scratch install of WordPress to play around with your new theme on, since you probably don’t want your initial attempts exposed for all to see on your live site.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:02:33 +0000

Thanks Paul! When I next get in a hacky mood (which always seems to happen when I’m away from the computer), I’ll be sure to utilize those resources. I haven’t clicked on anything yet, but is there a step-by-step sample guide on building a Wordpress theme? That is, one that walks you through creating your own generic theme. Because I’ve found that that is the way for me to learn any sort of programming language.

By: Paul Kuliniewicz

Paul Kuliniewicz — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:55:41 +0000

The double-main-loop hackery in the SoF WordPress theme should be extensible to a triple-main-loop setup without too much trouble. In fact, it'd probably be a bit easier: extra tricks are needed to show all the events scheduled for the next day there are events scheduled for, instead of just showing the next event. In addition to learning PHP, you'll also want to read up a bit on WordPress themes and how they work. The double-main-loop hack depends on knowing what the main loop is doing, and fiddling with it a bit behind its back. Also, be careful when searching for PHP resources out on the web; a lot of PHP code out there is so poorly written as to be WTF-worthy.