Wordpress
Themes

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Tutorial Overview

Topics covered in this tutorial (click link to jump to topic):

1.	Introduction
2.	Where Can I Get Wordpress Themes?
3.	How you I install them?
4.	Movie: Introduction to Wordpress Themes
5.	Can they be Customized?
6.	What this Theme Editor Thingy?

What follows pertains to Wordpress as installed on it’s own domain with it own theme and database, not as hosted at wordpress.com.

Introduction

The best way to think of a wordpress theme is as a skin. The theme is the design that is wrapped around the database content. The actual physical files of a theme are a collection of HTML files with PHP* and CSS included.

The idea of the Wordpress theme is to separate design aspects of the site from the data side of the site and to easily be able to swap from theme to theme with a couple of mouse clicks. Interestingly, this was the principal idea behind XML and XSTL.

This means that …

a. the design cost of a web site can be reduced to nothing, and
b. upgrading in the future is equally inexpensive.

*PHP does not stand for anything. It is a glue type technology made for connecting to database content. It is open source unlike the Microsoft competitor product ASP. CCS stands for cascading style sheet – a little file that contain layout and formatting instructions.

Where Can I Get Wordpress Themes?

Wordpress themes are available in their thousands throughout the web. I have three favourite sources:
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
http://wpthemesfree.com/
http://www.templatemonster.com/category/wordpress-themes/ (not free, but come with source files for the graphics, which can be useful)

How you I install them?

There are two ways to install a theme…

upload the unzipped theme to your /public_html/wp-content/themes/ folder using your favourite FTP client. It will appear miraculously next time you login to the Wordpress and navigate to Appearance > Themes. More about theme installation.
Have the “one-click-plugin-updator” added to you build of Wordpress (it is just a plugin) and them you can use it to add plugins and themes to your site

Movie: Introduction to Wordpress Themes

Here is a short movie introduction to Wordpress Themes.

Can they be Customized?

The short answer is “yes”, but probably not by you as HTML, PHP and CSS skills are required. However Wordpress itself has load of customisation ability built in e.g.. Widgets for the sidebar(s) area. The Settings menu also has loads of features to change the way the site works.

The degree of customisation is determined by the theme. Sometimes only really backgrounds and banner can be changed. Other themes come with their own configuration control panel that allows you to change almost everything. See Atahuapla for example

What this Theme Editor Thingy?

Stay clear unless you under stand what all that code is in the editor box. Even advanced users have to be very careful what they do here. The theme editor allows you to get your hands on the source files for the current theme and make changes. E.g. comment out unwanted code or make additions to the style sheet.

Other Resources

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes

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