How To Build A WordPress CMS Theme eBook
You can read this eBook for free online, but if you enjoyed the series and want to keep a version with you, please support your friendly neighborhood dev (that’s me) and purchase the eBook.
Get The PDF/EPUB/MOBI Versions for Only $5!
Note: If you buy from PayPal, I’m sending these out manually, so please give me 24 hours to send the book!
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Hey Amber, awesome posts in this series! Any chance of converting this pdf to .mobi format for purchase?
I’m not sure how you do that…do you know?
You can find a list of tools here: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_conversion
I’m trying out Calibre now…not sure you follow me on twitter or not, but I’ll post if I’m successful.
OK I’ve got it in MOBI as well for ya
Hi, i’ve buy the e-book … Where i can download it. Thanks
After you purchased, you should’ve been redirected to a page with a link.
I’ve buy with my paypal account info@ipork.it with an iPad but no redirect link…Can you send by mail the link thanks
I sent you an email with the book early yesterday, have you checked your inbox?
Oh yes, sorry i’ve just download tank you
Hey Amber. I am from India and I am not able to buy it from Scribd using my India Credit Card. They say its open to only US customers only. Can I buy it from you using paypal? Please email me at gauravchandra1982@gmail.com
Hi Gaurav, I just added a PayPal link, sorry about that!
Love the book! Easy to understand. WordPress is less intimidating now!
Thank you Abbey!
Bought the book great stuff. I was wondering if it is possible to have your main wordpress theme CSS file in a folder called CSS rather that just having it in the root of the theme folder? Just annoys me not having things in folders. I know you can other css files in a folder but can the main one? This is a theme just for a client and not one I will ever share. Thanks Richard
Nope, you have to leave the style.css in the main theme folder, otherwise WordPress won’t recognize the folder as a theme.
Just got done reading the book. I’m about to build my own custom theme. I’m so used to building in HTML, so is it best practice to build out the main templates for HTML first then translate it for wordpress?
Also, regarding shortcodes…I’ve purchased a variety of themes that use them and was wondering is possible to integrate them into the theme I build.
Thanks!
Hi Christi,
I prefer to code WordPress in as I code HTML, because it tends to be a lot faster than separating the two. It takes only a little time to get used to, but stick to what you’re comfortable with. I don’t use shortcodes myself, but it could be a way to go if you’re not comfortable with custom code.
Any chance you could show us how you made your nav buttons on this site?
Hi Christi,
Which part would you like to know? I’m simply using wp_nav_menus with some CSS3 multi backgrounds
More like…how did you make sure the right graphic went with the right link. I see in your css you numbered them. How does wordpress menu know which goes with which. Does that make sense?
WP actually auto assigns the ID numbers to each link, so all I did was use inspect element to see what the numbers were, and then added the bkg images using CSS
Does that help?
Yup that helps! I think I just confused because your numbers were not more random like page id 373. Built my first whole theme! Wish the book had a chapter on the sidebar (even though I got the code from hijinks) and how to wigitize the footer with different columns and such.
WP has gotten a lot better by assigning their IDs in numerical order. Congrats on your first them! (I’ll consider a sidebar/widget tutorial post for ya
)
I’ll definitely be buying this and supplementing it with digging into wordpress.
For now, I’ll read on the blog.