To start the series of articles on the topic of wordpress theme programming. We will understand if we want to learn wordpress theme programming, what knowledge and tools do we need first?
WordPress is an open source, a content management system (CMS) that is no stranger to programmers. It is a great tool to quickly create a website with thousands of beautiful themes.
The themes on the wordpress theme store are very diverse with all kinds of functions and themes. But to create an interface of wordress is not a simple matter. You must have knowledge of wordpress theme programming. To make it easy to learn as well as fully understand this series, you need to prepare some knowledge in advance.
Contents
Basic WordPress knowledge:
To program wordpress, first you need to know what wordpress is? And how to manage its available functions. The knowledge of this section should be:
- What is WordPress?
- Manage posts in wordpress
- Manage themes in wordpress
- Manage plugins in wordpress
- Manage users in wordpress
- Learn and use the items in the wordpress admin
Currently on the blog there is a series of basic wordpresss tutorials you can check out. Or study on youtube, I have also made a series of videos Learn basic wordpress
Knowledge of HTML CSS JS:
Theme programming means that we will go to create the interface of the wordpress website. When it comes to the website interface, you must have basic front end knowledge:
Regarding HTML:
- Know the basic tags and their functions (div, a, img, p, span, strong, input, select, form, h1, h2, h3, h4…)
- Know how to divide website layout
Regarding CSS:
- Know basic css properties like (color, background, font, font-size, ,margin, padding, top, posts, display…)
- Must css to have a basic website page
- Can build website layout
About js:
About js wordpress mainly uses jquery, so you should have knowledge of jquery like
- Events (Click, hover, submit)
- Effect
- Know how to use the sliders available libraries
In addition to that knowledge, you need to know the theme knowledge about bootstrap and responsive website.
Basic knowledge of PHP:
WordPress is a cms written in the programming language PHP and of course its theme is also PHP. Therefore, to program a wordpress theme, you must also have basic PHP knowledge
- php syntax
- if else
- for loop, foreach
- Handling arrays array
- String handling
Especially to do well, you must prepare knowledge about the database here is mysql.
Mentally prepare to learn wordpress theme programming:
You have to be mentally prepared to be a programmer. WordPress has many themes, sometimes you don’t need to know the code to design a website. But here we are going to program the interface for others to use, so we have to learn programming.
- Good computer use
- Research ability
- Search and store relevant documents
- Clear code and comment comments on the line of code
- Eager to learn and love to learn
- Careful
Prepare tools:
- Prepare a computer powerful enough for php programming
- Prepare a code editor like sublime text
- Pre-installed other necessary software
Sublime text 3 software I’m using to edit the code
Summary:
Above are my experiences after many years of working as a website developer. Good preparation helps you learn a new topic better and more effectively.
In the next article, we will go to learn how to go inside the components of a wordpress theme!
