With a wide variety of free, mobile-ready, and easy-to-use themes available, it’s no question why WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems. But despite the many options the platform offers, web designers will often have to customize these themes to suit their clients’ needs.
As a result, it’s important for aspiring web designers to understand the nitty-gritty code that goes into a WordPress theme. That way, you can add, delete, and swap out different functions, as well as alter the theme’s design to your liking. The moment when you become well-versed in these skills could be the moment that you transform your passion for web design into a successful career. Ready to get started? Read on to discover the ins and outs of WordPress theme anatomy.
HTML 101 for Web Design Students
Every student in web designer school starts at a different point in their coding journey, so it’s important to understand HTML basics before you begin dissecting the elements used in WordPress themes.
If you’ve looked at HTML code before, you’ll notice that each part of the web page—such as the header, navigation, and footer—is split up using a <div> tag. To style these components, you’ll need to use CSS, which denotes characteristics such as the colour, borders, and size of HTML elements. The process of building a WordPress theme is not all that different, as each element is split into separate files.
If you’re interested in developing and polishing your design skills, AOLCC offers instructor-led asynchronous online programs so you can learn how to create professional WordPress sites in a hands-on format.
Understanding the Common Components Found in WordPress Themes
Each WordPress theme is made up of some consistent elements, including style.css, which is the theme’s design source, and functions.php, which allows you to add custom functionality. While style.css is fairly self-explanatory, functions.php includes a variety of different actions such as adding CSS stylesheets and JavaScript files, denoting custom image sizes, registering nav menu areas, and filtering page content, which you’ll learn about in-depth through AOLCC’s web designer training.
Each WordPress theme also includes several kinds of PHP template files. These are responsible for crucial web elements like the header (header.php), footer (footer.php), and index (index.php) of a webpage.
The moment you fluently understand a computer language is a moment when you can tackle complex design tasks
How Those in Web Designer Training Can Customize a Theme Using style.css
From fonts to colours to responsive design, style.css is responsible for your WordPress site’s visual appearance. If you change an element in your theme’s style.css, it will automatically be applied to your entire website.
In addition, style.css is also how you register your WordPress theme. There is a comment section at the top of style.css, which indicates technical information about your themes, such as its name, author, parent theme, and version.
With so many options for styling and customization, it’s important to have a robust understanding of style.CSS. Through AOLCC’s web design diploma, you can learn how to harness the power and versatility of WordPress in a flexible format.
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