Welcome! WordPress themes are one of the most important topics that one must understand to be good at WordPress development. Themes underlie the entire visual half of WordPress sites, but often grow to do even more. Because of the visual importance, they’re a great place to dive in if you’re interested in getting to the “code-side” of WordPress. I myself “cut my teeth” on WordPress themes back in 2007 and 2008. WordPress themes were where I started to come to grips with the power (and limits) of PHP, CSS, and HTML. So this course is great for newbies, and those just looking to confirm their understanding of the whole system.

This text and video Quick Guide explains how to use is_singular(), one of the more useful WordPress template tags. We also explain the difference between the is_singular() conditional tag, and the two other related ones: is_page() and is_single().

This article introduces an important concept in WordPress themes: the WordPress get_template_part function. It’s one of the many important concepts of WordPress theme development. Mastering WordPress theme development is an important milestone in understanding WordPress development more generally. (We have a full free course on the topic, check it out.)

“WordPress is a factory” is a core analogy designed to clarify what WordPress is as a technical system.

I’m a bit behind the eight-ball on this. But I’m pretty excited by some of the new theme features that are in the works for WordPress 4.7. The most interesting to me is the new get_theme_file_uri() function, which will be a child-theme aware method of easily linking to your theme resources. Got that? It’s cool because:

Navigation menus are one of the most obvious features that go into making a site. If you’re building or revising a WordPress theme, you’ll almost certainly have one or more areas where you’ll want users to be able to easily make menus. Fortunately, they’ve thought of that.