WordPress 2.8 Theme Design
Product Description
Theme design can be approached from two angles. The first is simplicity; sometimes it suits the client and/or the site to go as bare-bones as possible. In that case, it’s quick and easy to take a very basic, pre-made theme and modify it. The second is “Unique and Beautiful”. Occasionally, the site’s theme needs to be created from scratch so that everything displayed caters to the specific kind of content the site offers. This book is going to take you through the Un… More >>
I seem to be reading quite a few WordPress books of late, and there are certainly a few to choose from. Packt Publishing’s WordPress 2.8 Theme Design’s tagline is ‘Create flexible, powerful, and professional themes for your WordPress blogs and websites’.
WordPress themes are of interest to me since they fuse a visual aspect with PHP code, and there’s no doubt that they appeal to many other people too.
Chapter Overview
1. Getting Started as a WordPress Theme Designer
2. Theme Design and Approach
3. Coding it Up
4. Debugging and Validation
5. Putting Your Theme into Action
6. WordPress Template Tag, Function, and CSS Reference
7. AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms
8. Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements
9. Design Tips for Working with WordPress
The book’s author Tessa Blakely Silver starts very gently with an introduction to WordPress themes and why downloading a theme that’s already been coded and designed may not always be the best solution. Subsequently, the book develops a theme from scratch and examines core technologies such as WordPress, CSS, XHTML and PHP.
The second chapter starts with a discussion of theme design in general, followed by the beginnings of the theme that’s developed throughout the book. There are further discussions on semantic markup, typography, fonts and layout.
The following chapter focuses on the code aspect of theme design, and suggests a workflow strategy as well as template tags, hooks, and the WordPress loop. Comments are then discussed in some detail, the topic including pagination and threaded comments.
Chapter four examines the process of debugging and validating. A thorough chapter includes references to the W3C validation services, Firefox’s JavaScript/Error console, Firebug and some of the issues that the budding theme developer will face when dealing with IE6.
Chapter five looks at the style.css file, which provides descriptive information about a theme, together with packaging the theme into a ZIP for distribution and running test installations of the theme package.
Chapter six adopts a more reference based approach, with an in depth examination of WordPress template tags, the WordPress template hierarchy, the loop and shortcodes.
The following chapter looks at AJAX and JavaScript, as well as preparing your theme for plugins and widgets.
Chapter eight builds on Chapter 7′s JavaScript discussion by developing a drop-down menu for the theme. There is also a discussion of Flash and how that can be used with WordPress themes.
Chapter nine rounds off the book with a number of design tips that apply not just to WordPress theme design, but web design in general.
The book’s about 250 pages in length, and is generally well written. I did, however, notice a few errors in code samples (mostly misplaced quotes), and a couple of examples in the prose itself. Another minor niggle was that the author talks about semantic markup, and then introduces ‘sidebarLT’ (sidebar left) and ‘sidebarRT’ (sidebar right) IDs into the markup.
The back of the book states: This book can be used by WordPress users or visual designers (with no server-side scripting or programming experience) who are used to working with the common industry-standard tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver or other popular graphic, HTML, and text editors. Regardless of your web development skill set or level, you’ll be walked through the clear, step-by-step instructions. But familiarity with a broad range of web development skills and WordPress know-how will allow you to gain maximum benefit from this book.
It seems as through Packt have tried to convince the potential reader that this is the book for them, regardless of whether they’re fairly inexperienced in some areas, or a a highly skilled developer. I’d say that the book covers a lot of ground, and that it does so at a pace that would be suitable for an inexperienced developer. Much of the content, however, would already be familiar to a skilled web developer, and so I feel that they’d think that the really useful content is a little thinly spread.
Overall, it’s encouraging to see more books about WordPress; although the internet is a fantastic resource, books still have a very important role in my opinion. The content of this one is great for beginner-medium level web developers, but more experienced readers will be left wanting more.
Rating: 4 / 5
WordPress 2.8 Theme Design is the right book for those who currently understand the basics of WordPress setup and theme modifications. Many books on WordPress explain how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog, customize a header graphic and basic WordPress blog management tasks and procedures. WordPress 2.8 Theme Design takes you beyond the setup and management basics and into the creation of your own unique WordPress theme from start to finish and is best for those who are comfortable with XHTML, CSS and Photoshop or GIMP. Silver begins with pros and cons of creating your own theme including WordPress design best practices.
Silver has what some would consider a unique way of creating rapid prototype composites. Rather than sketching and designing first is a design program (e.g. Photoshop), she starts out with a rough sketch then moves directly into developing the layout in HTML and CSS. Her reasoning for this is twofold: First, she knows that by creating and laying everything out in XHTML and CSS that the site actually works for the real environment it will be used on. Second, many changes from clients come in the form of text tweaks. Working this way is easier in her view then wading through many Photoshop layers. From there, she takes a screen-capture of the layout and finesses it in Photoshop to create a comp that is easy to update and has the benefit of being partly coded. From there she takes the reader through the steps to convert the HTML to XHTML & PHP for WordPress, widgetizing, testing your code and more.
There’s a lot to like about this book. Just the fact that the book is about Theme design and not just another “WordPress basics” book is worth noting. The instruction and reasoning behind each step and area of development is clear and concise. However, I tried and just couldn’t get into a good groove in using her HTML to composite process. I’m going to give it another shot in the future but even if you work from PSD composite to XHTML/CSS the book is still very good – you’ll just need to reverse some of her work flow ideas to suit yourself.
**Disclosure: I received this book at no cost from the book publisher.
Rating: 4 / 5
OK, I know authors and publishers are under the gun to get stuff out the door with limited budgets, but the copy in this book is downright appalling. Obviously nobody bothered to edit it. The organization is terrible and every page has really bonehead grammatical and punctuation errors, which makes me reluctant to trust the code samples (they also contain typos). This is a real shame because there’s a lot of good info here — especially for front-end developers like myself. I probably wouldn’t buy another book from this publisher or author. Compared to the WordPress Bible (which I’m also reading), it’s the difference between night and day. A big disappointment.
Rating: 2 / 5
Ordered this book from amazon, however they shipped The other WordPress Book by Packt Publishing instead. Original Review was written for that mis-shipped book. Changed rating to middle star regretfully there is no way to remove a review once it’s made.
Rating: 3 / 5
I highly recommend WordPress 2.8 Theme Design. For beginners it provides an easy to read guide that details the process of theme design from start to finish.
Developers already familiar with WordPress will also find this book useful, it covers more advanced topics not commonly found in online tutorials, such as the use of Ajax within a theme, Flash and JavaScript integration.
It’s expected that readers have an understanding of HTML and CSS. A knowledge of PHP would be helpful but with WordPress’s template functions it is not necessary. It would have been useful had they included a chapter on how to setup a local development server, for those that do not have a web server already. However a quick Google will get you up and running in that regard.
Example code is helpfully provided as a download from the publisher’s website including instructions on what to do with it. The screenshots and illustrations are very beneficial alongside the well written content.
Compared to my own articles on the subject, this book wipes the floor in its detail on the subject. For example its section on typography in chapter 2 really impressed me, it is not a subject that is always covered in deign guides but something that can actually make or break a design very easily. The use of relative font sizing throughout the book is also a good practice that I welcome.
The technical detail used in this book would not alienate a reader that the book is described for. The writing is friendly but informative, making for a read that is not to heavy.
Chapter 6 provides some great reference material on the WordPress theme functions (which can be further looked up on the WordPress Codex that provides even more detail), useful long after you have finished the theme that is created by following the book.
In all this book is an excellent resource for developers starting out with WordPress and those that are already designing for it. Its methods are reusable, follow good practices, and could be applied on the creation of any other theme.
The Contents
1. Getting Started as a WordPress Theme Designer
2. Theme Design Approach
3. Coding It Up
4. Debugging and Validation
5. Putting Your Theme into Action
6. WordPress Template Tag, Function, and CSS Reference
7. AJAX / Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms
8. Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements
9. Design Tips for Working with WordPress
As a note, I was provided with a review copy.
Rating: 4 / 5