What skills and knowledge do you need to build WordPress themes?

 

It depends, because building a theme for a basic blog site is different from building an eCommerce theme. However, no matter what kind of WordPress theme you want to make, it helps to know some PHP because you pretty much can’t build without it.

You’ll also need patience to look things up in the theme development section of the WordPress Codex as you work, to answer all the little questions that come up as you’re building. Fortunately, finding what you need can be as easy as Googling “show [component] WordPress codex”–for example, “show featured image WordPress codex” or “show date WordPress codex.”

With some PHP know-how and WordPress knowledge, it’s possible to create simple custom themes even if you don’t know how to code. That’s because there are resources you can use to find code snippets you need to add functionality and features to your theme.

 

 

Pro tip: Enqueueing is a way to add stylesheets and JavaScript efficiently. That’s because these WordPress functions will cross-check against the core and plugin stylesheets and JavaScript to make sure that you don’t run into any conflicts. Enqueueing also helps to keep your theme code organized, so it’s easier for you or other developers to update. And these functions allow you to use included WordPress included libraries for faster theme-building.