Design Your 1st WordPress Theme IN MINUTES!

Design Your First WordPress Theme IN MINUTES! @brettbum
http://softduit.com
Brett Bumeter @brettbum -> Softduit Media Las Vegas WordCamp 10/09 BlogWorld 2009
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Who am I?
I'm a former corporate whistleblower, turned professional philosopher (blogger). I provide business development and CMS web design & configuration services.
I work from a WiFi Fishing dock on Lake Wylie near Charlotte, NC
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I work from a WiFi Fishing dock on Lake Wylie near Charlotte, NC
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What Are You Going to Learn In This Session
What it takes to design a WordPress Theme
How to design a WordPress Theme with the tools to do the job
Some Intermediate skills that you can use to create some advanced WordPress as a CMS designs & Configuration
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What Can I help You Do?
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A year ago, I couldn't design a wordpress theme to save my life.
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I could download a free theme . . .
. . . and hack it to do all sorts of things, but I was always trapped in someone else's box.
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These Themes Shared a couple common issues
They weren't functional enough, bad for SEO
They rarely had valid html, xhtml or css
No menu capability (so no CMS)
They weren't MINE!
Plus they were kind of ugly and tended to be used repetively when I found a theme that worked
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Fast Forward 1 year, I've designed hundreds of themes, for myself, for friends and family and professionally for my clients! $$$ AND . . .
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I can teach you how to design themes, in minutes, EVEN IF you are not a graphic designer & don't know the difference between PHP and PCP in fact we're going to walk some volunteers through the process now. I'm going to guide them, and they are going to take a stab at it on their own computers.
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What do you need to design a theme?
Theme Design Software
In the past, this meant you needed to buy some expensive (very expensive) product(s) from Adobe
Then, You took your expensive software and found or paid for hours and hours of training or education with that software.
Finally, the people that survived that would need to consider whether they wanted to pay or spend the time with more advanced education or training in graphic design or maybe take a few classes in programming with PHP connected to MySQL
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Good Bye Theme Design Learning Curve
I found this great software program that takes the learning curve almost completely out of theme design
WordPress
Joomla
Drupal
even Blogger!)
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What do you need Now?
All you need is a PC or a Mac computer and a pulse
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And Maybe A REASON to create a siteThat's About it!

A tool called Artisteer, and yes there is a free trial! Artisteer.com
You can take it for a spin yourself, here while you are at WordCampor BlogWorldor in the privacy of your own dock office
Disclosure, Yes I have an affiliate link, but just go straight there or Artisteer Price ranges from about $50 - $130
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Lets Do a Quick Theme!
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In fact, I'm even running a theme design contest for beginners between now ending this week after Blogworld in October. Details: the License to Design Theme Contest http://bit.ly/Lic2DsgnContest
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Try it And Maybe Win a Free License Wednesday

Trying on the Big boy/girl Theme Design Pants
You Still have to Put Your Pants on 1 Leg at a time
MutlipleThemes On a Single WordPress Install
Dynamic Flash Headers & Rotating Pictures
Want to Run a Home Page with Category Excerpts?
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Mutliple Themes On a Single WordPress Install
What does this Look Like in Execution?
The process w/ Artisteer
Resources
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What does this Look Like in Execution?
Show GrassShack Media Site http://grassshackroad.com
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The process w/ Artisteer
Create a default theme
(the theme for your index.php file or blog)
Think of it as the look and feel of your site that will be used the most or in most circumstances on your site.
Create additional themes (as many as you like or need) but export these as sub folders in your primary theme folder
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The process w/ Artisteer (2)
Build your code
to reference the additional themes for whatever page, category etc that you like,
calling the specific location of the header for the sub themes in that code (note the header calls the css)
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Copy the sidebar files for the sub themes into the higher level directory, but rename them to a higher numerical number
tip change the number in the sub theme folder first, then copy the files to the higher level directory, don't move them, so you will have an easy reference to match which sidebar goes with which sub theme
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Update the sidebar numbers in your css file of the sub themes to match the new file
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Dynamic Flash Headers & Rotating Pictures
nextgenplugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
Google NextGenWordpressPlugin
wow That was easy, there's a plugin for it!
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Want to Run a Home Page with Category Excerpts?
No problem, there's a plugin for that
Category Posts Plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-posts/
You can achieve the fundamental theme design results you are looking for and build or leverage existing plugins to achieve exceptional results that some themes charge hundreds of dollars for.
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Resources
Don't read this stuff, you came to learn not research when you get home
wait, if you are reading this from home, dig in at your leisure, regardless, this is where I got some but not all of my info and know how
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/233663?replies=6
http://www.ruhanirabin.com/different-headers-in-different-categories-and-pages-wordpress/#dsq-comments
1) this is the code to get an alternate header =
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/header2.php'); ?>
2) i moved a file outside of the wp directory and that file is now looking for header2.
i tried this but it does not work =
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . 'http://www.domain.com/wp-content/themes/theme/header2.php'); ?>
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