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.