There are thousands of WordPress themes to choose from all over the internet but if you the type who would want a unique look for your blog, you may be considering creating a unique skin that won’t be found anywhere else. Granted, you should have a bit knowledge on coding to create a versatile and fully functional WordPress theme but I believe you’re not so good with codes and will keep this as simple as possible. However, you need to have a little idea about graphic designing, Photoshop basics at least.
Creating your own WordPress theme isn’t as hard as you think and creating your own unique skin can be made easy by using some softwares or simply editing a ready made theme to your taste. This blog runs on Genesis theme Framework with a customized child theme you can hardly find on any other blog. You can do the same by using any of the methods listed in this article.
As earlier said, you should know a bit of graphic designs to do this, A little CSS too will be of great help. Knowing HTML and PHP too is a great advantage but even without a single knowledge in coding, you can still come up with a creative design.
1. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6
Adobe Dreamweaver is a software every aspiring web designer / developer should have as it makes it easier to get things done. Adobe Dreamweaver has CMS support for Joomla, Drupal and most importantly, WordPress. With little knowledge in coding, it can give your blog that outstanding look you desire. The user interface is intuitive and even as a experienced WordPress developer, the hints can easily let you learn new WordPress hooks you’re probably not familiar with. Dreamweaver is pretty expensive but it’s worth the money. There’s a full tutorial on their official blog on how to take full control of this powerful tool to create your own Worpress theme.
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2. Adobe Photoshop & Divine Elemente
If Dreamweaver is rather too difficult for you, this should be relatively simpler. With Adobe Photoshop, you can design what you want your WordPress blog to look like and you don’t even need to write a single line of code to do this. Divine Elemente works like a plugin that turns your already installed Adobe Photoshop to a “WordPress theme generator.” If you’re already conversant with Photoshop, you should find this very easy to use. You can download from here and the guide on that page should get you started.
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3. Editing image files & CSS from WampServer
I love this and most times, it’s how I edit wordpress themes. You need to install WordPress locally on your computer and there’s a tutorial I wrote about that using WampServer and you must understand this fully to make use of this method. The files to your theme should be located in C:wampwwwwordpresswp-contentthemestheme_name. From this location, you can edit the default image files with Photoshop or try to be creative and use new ones. You can also edit the CSS file to your taste and preview changes immediately on your browser without being connected to the internet. If you’re using Genesis, you can create a child theme from this sample and if you’re creating a regular Worpress theme, this sample can be edited to your taste.