Do you aspire to be good at WordPress development someday? Then you must understand how crucial WordPress theme development is. You can connect with an expert in WordPress web design London. They will tell you the same thing! For a WordPress site, themes play a vital role, especially in defining the visual status of the website.
As a web developer, when you learn how to create custom WordPress themes, you open up a whole new undiscovered world of WordPress. Creating custom themes for your or your client’s website is a lot more fun than you realize. Besides, if you want to be adept at WordPress development, these are the things you got to work on.
Either you seek help from a service provider for WordPress web design in London or learn on the internet, you must begin from scratch. Do you know what WordPress theme development is? Why is it so necessary for your site? If not, then that is where you must begin. Here we will discuss the introduction to WordPress theme development and its working.
What is WordPress Theme Development?
WordPress themes are files used together to create website design and functionality. There are different types of themes available that a site owner can choose from according to their needs. On the other hand, WordPress theme development is the creation of these files used during web development. A WordPress theme developer specializes in the field and has enough knowledge and skills to go about the job.
WordPress offers a Starter Theme to the users. It acts as a base when you are developing your own. If you are relatively new at WordPress and theme development, a starter theme helps you understand the basic structure of a WordPress theme. It also saves your time and effort wasted on complex theme coding.
Why Create Your Personalized WordPress Theme?
Since there are starter themes that you can use, you might be wondering why opt for a personalized WordPress theme? Well, if this question has started to overturn your decision to create a WordPress theme, find the reasons to choose a customized theme below:
- The first reason to personalize your WordPress them is uniqueness. The starter themes are being used by countless websites anyway. By adding a unique touch to your site, you stand out among the rest. Your potential customers will notice and value your website’s distinctiveness in the long run.
- One of the top qualities you must look for in a WordPress web design service in London is creativity. Web designing and development is all about creativity. With a personalized WordPress theme, you get an opportunity to bring your creativity to light. Once you master WordPress theme development, your creativity will only improve.
- Having a customized theme gives you the power to control the visual design. In simple words, you can make whatever changes you want and whenever you want. Creating a WordPress theme from scratch prevents you from being limited. You can make changes to the design to meet your goals.
How Does WordPress Theme Development Work?
With the introduction to WordPress theme development and the reasons completed, let’s focus on its working. If you don’t know how WordPress theme development works, allow us to guide you through the process.
- Get Your Local Development Environment Ready
The first step to WordPress theme development is setting up your local environment. An ideal local development environment is an easy-to-use platform. Here, you can run your website without the help of a web-hosting service. Plus, having a local environment is a safer alternative too.
You can choose a relevant platform to create a local environment. Once the installation process is complete, configuring your new local development environment is a straightaway process. Here, you can practice changes you want to make to your WordPress site without affecting the live website.
- Install A Starter Theme
As mentioned above, you need a starter theme for a base design. Your hired WordPress web design company in London can easily find and install a WordPress theme to get going. After downloading and completing the starter theme set up, preview the site to check the current design.
The starter theme will be very basic at the start. You can go through the current design to get an idea of what changes you need. A starter theme is a great way to familiarize yourself with the patterns and designs. It becomes more essential for a newbie WordPress theme developer.
- Understand the Elements of WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme development is a full-fledged process. It requires you to explore the components of WordPress and how they will work for your theme development. Among the main elements of WordPress is template files. Your chosen template will determine how your website page will look.
Other than templates, there are many other crucial elements included in WordPress theme development. To carry out the process effectively and bring desirable results, you must learn about these WordPress elements.
- Configure Your Customized WordPress Theme
You and your hired professionals for WordPress web design in London will need to work on the theme functionality. Hooks is a common feature in WordPress that you can use. These are code snippets that enable you to run PHP actions on various locations on the site.
Apart from Hooks, you also have CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). These work to style and enhance the site’s appearance. To configure and set up your WordPress theme, you need to the access style.css file.
- Exporting and Uploading the Theme
Before you get your WordPress theme live, you must test it to make sure it works properly. WordPress provides the developers with Theme Unit Test data to check the efficiency of the theme under different circumstances. These are dummy content that contains numerous style variations. You can upload these to determine your theme’s relevancy.
After the testing phase, you will know if your theme is 100 per cent ready for export. You will find your personalized WordPress theme on your device inside the website folder. You can access it at /wp-content/themes/. You can export the zip folder with the WordPress theme that will be ready for upload.
Conclusion
WordPress theme development is not something you can be an expert at overnight. So, if you want a customized theme for your website, it is better to reach out to qualified professionals. Someone who is a well-established WordPress web design company in London with an experienced WordPress development team.
