Having a great theme, along with a great user experience is what makes a WordPress website stand out, attract customers, and drive business. To get the most out of WordPress themes, there are three different methods you can use to create one. This article will explain the benefits of each method and which one to choose depending on your clients needs.
Method #1 Use a Template Theme
A template theme is the simplest and fastest solution when building a website. There are hundreds and maybe thousands of different template themes that have already been created by WordPress developers that are ready to use with no coding neccesary. Many of these themes have advanced customization options that you can implement without code as well.
To get started with a template theme, open up the WordPress Dashboard. In the sidebar, hover over appearance, then click themes. You will see the themes that have already been installed and at the end there will be a blank box that you can push to add a new theme. From there, you can look through all of the different WordPress themes available for download and activate one.
This solution gives you a website theme as quickly and as easily as possible. Many of these themes will work great for small businesses. There are still some customization options available to you which you can see in the dashboard under ‘appearance’ then click ‘customize’.
What if you find a theme you like but the customization options are not quite good enough for what you want to do? This brings us to our next solution.
Method #2 Use a Child Theme
In this method, you still get all the benefits of using a template theme but also get to customize the theme however you want. A child theme in WordPress is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme. This allows you to make changes to your website without affecting the parent theme. This will require you to have some knowledge of WordPress development and theme building but still much easier than building a theme from scratch.
1.)Start by downloading a theme you like by using the steps in method 1.
2.)Create a new folder in your WordPress themes directory (wp-content/themes). Give the folder a name that reflects the parent theme, such as “yourthemename-child”.
3.) In the new folder, create a file called “style.css”. This file will contain the styles for your child theme.
Put the following code in the style.css file.
/*
Theme Name: Your Child Theme Name
Template: yourthemename
Description: A description of your child theme.
Author: Your Name
Version: 1.0
*/
4.) Next, create a ‘functions.php’ file in the same folder and add the following code.
<?php add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘enqueue_parent_styles’ ); function enqueue_parent_styles() { wp_enqueue_style( ‘parent-style’, get_template_directory_uri().’/style.css’ ); }
This will add all the parent styles and scripts to your child theme.
Your child theme is now ready to be activated in appearance>themes. You may also copy over files from your parent theme to the child and begin editing. Just make sure that you use the same file name and location in your child theme as it is in your parent.
Method #3 Create Your Own Theme
This the most customizable solution but also the most time consuming. It is only recommended if you have advanced knowledge of theme building and the other two options are not good enough or if you are a theme developer. It is recommended that you start with a barebones theme then add the neccesary components as you see fit. Barebones themes will give you all the most important parts of a website but will allow you to do all of the styling and add extra components. I use Underscore as my starter theme but there are other options as well.
Simply copy your starter theme compressed file into the Content>themes folder of your site then decompress it and start editing.
I hope this helped you find a solution for your theme. Whichever option you decide is entirely up to you and your clients needs.
