These days with so many WordPress themes being released, you need something to make your theme stand out from the crowd. One of the ways you can do this is by creating an awesome theme options page. In this post we’ll explore exactly how to do that. And at this point, it’s worth saying the code used in the next two tutorials has been taken from a couple of themes – the Arras theme and the miniBlog theme (although be wary using it – sponsored links in the footer!).

Getting started

Right. Lets get to it. First thing, create new file, functions.php. Save it and upload it to your theme folder. Next, lets start the admin page. My hypothetical theme I’m using in this tutorial is called ‘Hexadecimal’, or hd for short:

<?php // Theme options page
// Created using the tut at WPShout --> https://wpshout.com/create-an-awesome-wordpress-theme-options-page-part-1/
$themename = "hexadecimal";
$shortname = "hd";
$options = array (

Copy and paste the code above into your functions.php file, replacing the themename with your theme’s name and shortname with a shortened version of your theme’s name.

The options:

Allow the user to change the theme’s colours

So now we’ve started, next thing we need to is start creating the options. But before we do that, let’s say hello.:

array(
"name" => "Hello.<br /> Isn't this fun!",
"type" => "misc"),

And there we are. We’ve just siaid hello. Now lets start doing some useful stuff! Something that is pretty awesome is being able let your theme’s users customise the colours of the theme from the options page. This is where it could start getting complicated, so just bear with me!

Selecting colours is going to have two options, so first thing to do is to make a title:

array(  "name" => "Select Your Colors",  "type" => "title"),

array( "type" => "open"),

Next, we’re going to add the option to change the background image. First, a little explanation: ‘name’ is the title. ‘desc’ is a little description of what the option does. ‘id’ is what’ll we’ll use in part two to implement the colour changing into the theme in part two. ‘std’ is what is displayed by default and ‘image’ is the little explanatory image that gets displayed below the title (which we’ll implement later).

I digress. Copy, paste and customise the code below.

array(
"name" => "The Background (colour)",
"desc" => "Here you can choose the background colour for the whole site. Awesome, no?  In other news, you'll need to put the colour in #000000 format, except without the # bit.",
"id" => $shortname."_main_bg",
"std" => "000000", "type" =>
"text", "image" =>  "background.jpg"),

Next, lets create another option, allowing the user to customise the page colour:

array(
"name" => "Another Colour",
"desc" => "This is another colour used somewhere else in the theme. Again, #000000 just without the # bit.",
"id" => $shortname."_another_bg",
"std" => "ffffff",
"type" => "text",
"image" => "anothercolour.jpg"),

Now that we’ve given the user some coluor changing options, we need to close that section.

array(
“type” => “close”),

array( “type” => “submit”),

Give the user some enable/disable options

Now we’ve created the first bit, that’s the hard bit out of the way. The rest of the way is plain sailing, just giving a couple more options. Lets say we want to give the user the option to enable/disable the search bar. The only extra thing we need now is a checkbox, which is set by default to ‘true’:

(or course, first we’re popping in a title)

array(
"name" => "Add/remove stuff",
"type" => "title"),

array(   "type" => "open"),

array(  "name" => "Display the search box?",
"desc" => "Tick/untick the box to show/disable the search box.",
"id" => $shortname."_search_box",
"type" => "checkbox",
"image" => "searchbox.jpg",
"std" => "true"),

(and, of course, closing off the section)

array(
"type" => "close"),

array(  "type" => "submit"),

The possibilities for a simple checkbox are endless – you can be showing/disabling elements everywhere on your theme! As with the colour changing, we’ll be implementing this in part two.

Adding a text box

Final option we’ll be adding in is a simple text box. It sounds simple, but the possibilities are almost endless. The example below is the user’s name, with the default Frederick.

array(
"name" => "Some text you can customise",
"type" => "title"),

array(  "type" => "open"),

array(
"name" => "What is your name?",
"desc" => "Names are an integral part of our society. My name is Frederick. What's yours?",
"id" => $shortname."_my_name",
"type" => "text", "image" => "",   "std" => "Frederick"),

array(  "type" => "close"),

array( "type" => "submit"),

(if this is the last option, then replace the last four lines with:

array(  "type" => "close")  );

)

Creating and styling the options page

So now we’ve created our options, we need to style them. This is where everything comes together – all the little bits we’ve been adding in – now we’re going to make use of them. Before we do that though, we need to tell WordPress to add the options page:

(see download below)

Next comes the styling bit. For each of the ‘type’s we created earlier, we need some styling. For example, the first thing we did was say hello, with the ‘type’ misc, so lets create styling for all types labelled misc:

(this must go directly below the code above, and includes some stuff you’ll need even if you don’t use a type misc)

(again, see downlad below).

Next, we need some styling for the title:

<?php break; case "title": ?>
<div style="width:810px; height:22px; background:#555; padding:9px 20px; overflow:hidden; margin:0px; font-family:Verdana, sans-serif; font-size:18px; font-weight:normal; color:#EEE;">
<?php echo $value['name']; ?> </div>

The next thing we made was the background colour changer, with the type ‘text’. You can guess where this is going –

<?php break;
case 'text':
?>
<div style="width:808px; padding:0px 0px 10px; margin:0px 0px 10px; border-bottom:1px solid #ddd; overflow:hidden;">
<span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; color:#444; display:block; padding:5px 0px;">
<?php echo $value['name']; ?>
</span> <?php if ($value['image'] != "") {?>
<div style="width:808px; padding:10px 0px; overflow:hidden;">
<img style="padding:5px; background:#FFF; border:1px solid #ddd;" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/<?php echo $value['image'];?>" alt="image" />
</div>
<?php } ?>

<input style="width:200px;" name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" type="<?php echo $value['type']; ?>" value="<?php if ( get_settings( $value['id'] ) != "")
{ echo stripslashes(get_settings( $value['id'] )); } else { echo stripslashes($value['std']); } ?>" />

<br/>

<span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:11px; font-weight:bold; color:#444; display:block; padding:5px 0px;">

<?php echo $value['desc']; ?>
</span>
</div>

Next up was the checkbox –

<?php
break;
case "checkbox": ?>
<div style="width:808px; padding:0px 0px 10px; margin:0px 0px 10px; border-bottom:1px solid #ddd; overflow:hidden;">
<span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; color:#444; display:block; padding:5px 0px;">
<?php echo $value['name']; ?>
</span>

<?php if ($value['image'] != "") {?>
<div style="width:808px; padding:10px 0px; overflow:hidden;">
<img style="padding:5px; background:#FFF; border:1px solid #ddd;" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/<?php echo $value['image'];?>" alt="image" />
</div>
<?php } ?>
<?php if(get_option($value['id'])){ $checked = "checked=\"checked\""; }else{ $checked = "";} ?>
<input type="checkbox" name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" value="true" <?php echo $checked; ?> />

<br/>

<span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:11px; font-weight:bold; color:#444; display:block; padding:5px 0px;">

<?php echo $value['desc']; ?>

</span>

</div>

Finally we had a textbox – although that had the type text, which we’ve already created the option for. All that is left to do is add some code that adds ‘submit’ styling and closes everything off.

<?php
break;
case "submit": ?>
<p class="submit">
<input name="save" type="submit" value="Save changes" />
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="save" />
</p>

<?php break; } } ?>
<p class="submit">
<input name="save" type="submit" value="Save changes" />
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="save" />
</p>
</form>

<form method="post">
<p class="submit">
<input name="reset" type="submit" value="Reset" />
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="reset" />
</p>
</form>

<?php
}

add_action('admin_menu', 'mytheme_add_admin');

?>

And finally

And there we go! All that is left to do is add in some images, which we’ve called searchbox.jpg, background.jpg and anothercolour.jpg. Create them and upload them to /yourtheme/images/.

You can download the functions.php file that follows the tut here

So that’s the options page created. In the next part of the series, we’ll be implementing the features we’ve created into a theme. Subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don’t miss it!