If you are interested in WordPress or developing Theme for your client, you may don't know how a professional WordPress developer work process. So if you want to develop Wordpress theme like a Pro or want to sale your theme, this guide will help you.

1. THEME DEVELOPMENT
WORKFLOW
Shameem Reza | Future IT Park

2. Shameem Reza
 CTO & Co-Founder – Future IT
Park
 Contributor – Ghost and
WordPress
 Wordpress Consultant
 Plugin Developer

3. The Pitch
 Understand clients requirements.
 Organizing client data.
 Post type / taxonomies – use the core Luke!
 Custom post data.
 Bespoke functionality.
 Who’s doing what?
 Timescales and contingency.

4. Pitfalls to avoid
 Quickie quotes.
 Setting milestones.
 Defining responsibilities.
 Service level and expectations.
 The contingency.
 Costs breakdown – give options.

5. Won it – Best Foot Forward
 Get sign-off of proposal and milestones.
 Engage and schedule outside resources.
 Upsell – Don’t devalue our services.
 Confirm payment details / schedule of
payment.
 Get client going on content (or copyrighter)
 Hosting / Domains

6. My Development Environment
 Internal
 Xampp / Lamp
 Sublime Text 2
 VMWare Fusion
 Modern.ie
 Photoshop
 External
 Github
 Google Drive
 Digital Ocean Cloud
Server

7. Working in a Team or as an
Individual
 Version control
 Tracking changes / work.
 Accountability of task / issue.
 Associate commits with milestones.

8. LINKING COMMITS TO
ISSUES

9. Working in a Team – Dev Workflow
Local
Development
Team
Commit to Github
Team
Deploy to test
server
Team

10. Wireframes – Don’t get ahead of
yourself
 Solve a-lot of queries.
 Defines what’s important.
 What actually needs to be editable?
 Clarifies functionality with clients.
 Save time = saves (your) profit.

11. Wireframe Examples

12. Theme Building Options
 Adapting (hacking!) other themes.
 Starter / Foundation themes, like _s.
 Frameworks + Child theme, like Genesis.
 From scratch.

13. Let the Coding Begin !
 Code straight into template files.
 Avoid CSS( until later) – code pure XHTML.
 Identify and use common CSS classes :
 Colour definitions.
 Layout and containers.
 Identify common layout components :
Template parts.

14. Plugins or functions.php
 Plugins :
 Post types
 Taxonomies
 Advance functionality
 Functions.php :
 Widgets
 Enqueue styles / scripts
 Smaller utility / Display functions

15. Keep functions.php Organized
 Group into logical sections
 Comment as much you can.
 Template parts / includes vs. big chunks of
code.

16. Functions.php Example

17. Functions.php Example

18. Create your Own Hooks
 Add function to do_action in functions.php:
function mytheme_hook_after_page_loop(){
do_action('mytheme_hook_after_page_loop');
}
 Add action hook to theme:
mytheme_hook_after_page_loop()
 Use action hook:
function mytheme_insert_howdy(){ echo 'Howdy!';}
add_action(
'mytheme_hook_after_page_loop',
'mytheme_insert_howdy'
);

19. Testing Early – testing Often
 Run with Debug on during local development:
wp-config.php > define('WP_DEBUG', true);
 Developer Plugin
 Debug bar plugin

20. Test Data – Beyond Hello World
 Standard WordPress unit test data
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Unit_Test
 BuddyPress test data
https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-default-data
 Or export your own and make available to
team!

21. Deploy
 Migrating installs isn’t tough
http://interconnectit.com/products/search-and- replace-for-
wordpress-databases
 Analytics
 Optimization and cache
 XML sitemap(s) and Google webmaster tools
 Redirects for old site pages in .htaccess file
Redirect 301 /old.html http://www.site.com/new

22. Final Thoughts
 Stop using Plugins for simple things.
 Typography matters … and so does legibility.
 Don’t just copy and paste : examine, understand,
refine.
 On-server sub-domain dev environment but
lock it down!
 Keep R&D folder – don’t lose that researches.

23. Stop Hacking and Start
Creating

24. THANK YOU
Shameem Reza | Future IT Park