3 Ways to Create Your Own WordPress Theme Easily

Wordpress

There are literally thousands of WordPress themes currently available online, spanning over dozens of genres, so it is generally easy to find a theme that will fit your site’s needs. However, there are times when a custom theme may be absolutely necessary. For someone with very little web experience building a WordPress theme from scratch can be quite a daunting task. However there are ways to do this without any special knowledge or experience whatsoever. The following three methods are the easiest ways to get a custom theme for your site.

Hire a Freelance Designer

OK, this isn’t creating it yourself but it is perhaps the easiest way to get a custom theme made. Hiring a WordPress designer from one of the many freelancing forums online can actually be very reasonably priced. Sites like Freelancer.com and eLance.com have plenty of professional designers to choose from. These sites also have feedback systems that give you the chance to learn about the designer’s experience on that site. It is best to choose a designer that has many positive reviews. While this may be the easiest way to do it, it does require some initial outlay. If you’re operating on a budget then consider the following.

Edit a Premade Theme

The second easiest way to create a custom WordPress theme is to simply amend the style sheet of a premade theme. Within each WordPress theme there is a file named Style.css. The entire appearance of the theme can be edited within this file. Of course, the more skilled you are with CSS the more you’ll be able to do, but with a little bit of time, process of elimination, and the right tools you can change the look of your theme without any previous experience. Follow these instructions to edit your theme easily without any skills.

  1. Download an FTP client (FileZilla is free and highly recommended)
  2. Create an FTP account on your web host. (You should see the “FTP Accounts” module in your control panel)
  3. Once the FTP account is setup log into the FTP and navigate to the location of your theme’s files. Note: If you are having trouble setting up an FTP client or finding your themes files then call your web hosting company. They should be able to walk you through this process easily.
  4. Now that you’ve located the theme files, right click on the style.css file at the bottom of the theme folder.
  5. Click on “view/edit this file”
  6. The file will open in a text editor like notepad. Press ctrl+A (this will highlight all of the text). The press ctrl+C (this will copy all of the text). Now open up another Notepad window and paste the entire content of the style.css into that new text file. That will be your backup style sheet in case you ruin your theme accidentally.
  7. Now that you have a backup of your style sheet, you can begin editing your style.css sheet in the original window that you opened from FileZilla.
  8. Once you have edited the style.css sheet, press ctrl+s on your keyboard and it will save the new version of the style sheet. Click on FileZilla and it will ask you if you want to upload the new version to the server. Click yes and you’re finished! If you ever ruin the theme by accident you can simply upload the backup copy that we created earlier.

Of course, if you have no experience with CSS then this process would be much more difficult. However, you can start by changing the background color of your theme and using trial and error to find specific elements of your theme. To change the background color of your theme you can use a FireFox plugin called ColorZilla to find the HTML color code of your theme’s background. After you have installed ColorZilla in FireFox simply enable it and then click on the small dropper icon in the bottom left corner of your screen. The number code of the color that you mouse over will appear in the bottom left. Simply go back into the text editor and click on Edit, and then Find. Now just enter in the number code that ColorZilla gave you and it will find it in the text file! Simply change it to the desired color code and it will change the color of the theme. Note: On some themes the background i s an image file. If this is the case you will have to navigate to the image folder of your theme and replace the necessary image with your new background image.

Using Artisteer to Create a WordPress Theme

Perhaps the best way to create a custom WordPress theme is to use a program called Artisteer. Artisteer lets you build custom WordPress, Joomla, and Blogger themes from scratch in a simple drag and drop interface. There is even a button in the top left corner of the theme that will auto-generate themes for you. You can simply click this button repeatedly until you see a theme you like! Although Artisteer costs around $300, it is easily worth every penny.