5 Online WordPress Theme Generators

Editor — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:18:54 +0000

As we continue our series on Online Generators, we begin to focus more on sites that can provide more than just single components of a site. Today’s entry touches on an area that interests most of us … the ability to create your own WordPress Theme online.

One general comment is that we were very pleased by what was available today. But I personally feel that there is still some effort needed to make these sorts of tools easy to use for the masses.

We hope you enjoy our selection.

Theme Press

We started with Theme Press as our first WordPress Theme Generator because this site is what inspired us to research the topic. We liked the possibility of being able to upload our HTML templates to a site that could convert them to a WordPress template. What we quickly realized was that this site is meant for people that have some kind of website coding knowledge.

As developers, and with the advancements made by the WordPress team, we find it easier to modify existing WordPress themes than to submit our code to such a generator.

This tool does have some potential. But compared to the other tools that we discovered, it just wasn’t worth paying $10 at the end to download our WordPress Theme using this tool. Perhaps further revisions of this online tool will smoke the competition.

WP Theme Generator

This online WordPress Theme Generator has probably received the most publicity on the Internet thus far. They offer a tool bar down the left hand side where you can change the setting for the look and feel of your WP Theme, and then see the results on the right side.

We found this tool very simple and easy to use. But it is also a bit limiting when you consider the various option available to a WP Theme Designer. But it certainly get an A+ for ease of use.

WP Theme Builder

We were very impressed with this WP Theme Generator. The toolbar located at the top of the page was very easy to work out and understand. The options we were given allowed us to create a very professional looking WordPress Theme. The site also offers comprehensive tutorials for creating a WordPress Theme along with Support, documentation and an online FAQ.

The only disadvantage was the price. Yes, they charge for the service. But considering what you might pay online for a professional theme, the price is competitive.

Theme Generator – beta

This WordPress Theme Generator was a personal favorite. The expanding menus on the left hand side are very intuitive and easy to use. They offer you most options available and are broken down into the different areas of a WordPress Theme. Changes made in the menu are immediately visible in the theme. Also offered are some color templates to help get you started. Each of the color elements can be changed as you get into each of the areas of the theme.

The best way to experience this Online Generator is to play with it. It’s free and when you’re done, your WordPress Theme is saved with the click of a mouse button.

PixoPoint

This WordPress Theme Generator was also a favorite among the team. Again, an very easy to understand menu on the upper left hand portion of the screen broken down by the various areas of a WordPress Theme. This tool also offered many options for creating a theme that we find useful. The only down side to this theme is that when you made a choice in the menu, you have to click the ‘Submit Design’ key to see you changes every time.

One of the things missing from all of the online generators we tried was an Undo button. Each of the tools had it’s own feel to it, some clumsy, others more elegant. But still they all lacked a feeling like this was THE tool for creating a WordPress theme. I realize it is difficult to create a web tool that is liked by 100% of it’s audience. But it does seem that there is some room for other players for sites that are Online WordPress Theme Generators.

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What is a WordPress Child Theme?

Editor — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:15:45 +0000

One of the more complex issues with WordPress occurs when you need to customize the look and the feel.

This is complex because, in the past, a blog owner needed to understand some of the PHP code in a WordPress theme before they could begin to make any custom changes. The process usually involves finding a theme that you like, and then changing as little as possible for the desired look.

Using WordPress Child Themes makes the customization process much easier.

I found out about this feature while doing some research on WordPress Theme Frameworks, which will be a topic for a future date. The process to setup a Child Theme is simple.

Step 1 – create a directory in the /Theme/ directory of your blog with the name of your theme (i.e. – /themes/mytheme/).

Step 2 – in your new directory, create a file called ‘style.css’

Step 3 – add the following lines of code to your newly created style.css file:

/*
Theme Name: Rose
Theme URI: the-theme's-homepage
Description: a-brief-description
Author: your-name
Author URI: your-URI
Template: use-this-to-define-a-parent-theme--optional
Version: a-number--optional
*/

Note the line in bold text. This is the key. Change the value for Template from “use-this-to-define-a-parent-theme–optional” to the directory name of the WordPress theme you will be using as a template — or Parent Theme. So if you are using a Theme such as Arthemia as a Parent theme, the Template line would look as follows:

Template: arthemia

Step 4 – Now we want to import the styles from the Parent Theme by adding only 1 line to our Child Theme style.css.

@import url(../arthemia/style.css);

If you have a look at your blog now, it should look exactly like your Parent Theme. What you’ve just done is created a safe work space to make changes to the Parent Theme without touching any of the original theme files.

Now you are ready to begin adding CSS styling to your style.css file to customize your Child Theme. Any style declarations that you make to the style.css file in your Child theme will over ride those from the Parent Theme.

If you still need to make changes to the theme files, simply copy the Parent Theme template file to your Child Theme directory and make the edits. WordPress will look in the Child Theme directory first for template files. If an alternate version of a template file exists, WordPress will use that template file instead of the file in the Parent Theme directory.

For more on this topic, have a look at the WordPress Codex. We would also like to thank the people over at ThemeShaper for the inspiration behind this article.