Creating a WordPress Theme – Part 3

I’ve made the decision this morning to target a launch date for the new theme for May 1, 2007. With that in mind, I’ve got 10 days to get it done. To that end, I’ve created a To Do list of items to be completed:

To Do

  • Install copy of WordPress on development box
  • Import backup of live site content to provide some content for the development site
  • Create a bare-bones set of template files
  • Review the default CSS before beginning development of custom CSS for new template
  • Setup CSS for basic layout
    • 2-Column wide left, narrow right, approximately 75% – 25% split
    • Site width: 1024px (current width ~800px)
    • This gives almost the same relative widths as the current template, but with an increased overall width, resulting in a wider left column (and right) to give more room for graphics & code as desired.
    • Header will be short, ~ 5% +/- of screen height
    • Footer will be one or two text lines
  • Select color scheme
  • Select photo / graphic / logo for header and develop site-wide navigation in header
  • Select items to be included in sidebar:
    • About – Should I include picture of me?
    • Search
    • Feeds
    • Email subscription option?
    • Archives – Perhaps better in header site-wide navigation?
    • Categories and/or tag cloud?
    • Blogroll – Move to separate page?
    • Space for affiliate ads
    • Space for site support links (Blogflux currently)
  • Setup footer with statistic tracking codes, etc.
  • Plan post layout and post-related plug-in use.

I’m sure I’ll come up with other details, but that will be the basic flow.