Custom Wordpress themes

I've been doing a bunch of work with Wordpress themes this past week. I'm at the point where I can comfortably create a custom them. At the same time, I've reached the point where I am more comfortable creating CSS layouts than table layouts (what a difference!)

Next I'll be creating a new theme for my Web Publishing Blog. When I first launched it, James suggested I use a more colorful design. Now that I finally have the experience I'll be creating a new theme (although I do kind of like the one I'm using now)

Has anyone else here created custom Wordpress themes for their blogs?

Congrats on learning this! I've debated on using wordpress for my new golf site (although not nessessarily a blog). But I was kinda under the impression it was best for a blog and nothing else. I wouldn't need the archives, categories, rss type stuff for the site, but did not know if it was possible to not include it into your design? All the wordpress sites I've seen have these things.

congrats on the CSS layouts as well...I'm definitely more comfortable with CSS now then tables.

You can get rid of all the blog stuff with little difficulty. I know some people have discussed using Wordpress as a CMS. I might do some experimenting with it in the future.

I'm not sure how Wordpress handles under heavy server loads. I was talking to one webmaster who had a high-traffic blog and had to pull a bunch of stuff down because of the traffic. I'm not convinced he knew what he was doing.. but thats what he told me.

www.interaktonline.com sells a Dreamweaver extension that is designed to help non programmers build database driven sites. Their big example of how to use their extensions is a very detailed tutorial of how to build your own blog. For those of you who are into coding it might provide a system design that would help you code a lightweight blog yourself.

i would recommend using dmxzones not interakts from past experience.

Sounds good, Andy. Good luck with the new layout.

I've never used a default template for WordPress. I usually don't change the basics too much, like I'll often include the Title, Date, Post, then a link for Comments.

You've actually reminded me that I was planning on doing a bit of a series of blog entries on Michael's http://frynetwork.com blog.

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Originally Posted by Cutter

You can get rid of all the blog stuff with little difficulty. I know some people have discussed using Wordpress as a CMS. I might do some experimenting with it in the future.

I'm not sure how Wordpress handles under heavy server loads. I was talking to one webmaster who had a high-traffic blog and had to pull a bunch of stuff down because of the traffic. I'm not convinced he knew what he was doing.. but thats what he told me.

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Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Using Wordpress as a CMS. I like the looks of Drupal though, so I'm thinking of trying it out. There is also another one called DragonFly that is suppose to be a good CMS.

Just finished spending all day rolling over my gaming website into Wordpress. Its not exactly a CMS, I just use it to publish news on the site. I felt like ripping my eyeballs out for a few moments there, but its done now. Its going to be a hell of a lot easier for me, and others, to update the site with new news.

There are still some elements of the site that are going to be tricky to do. I'm really no programmer or technical genius so its a lot of trial and error for me to get things to function.

I like wordpress and have been coming to the same conclusion - that it makes a great CMS - unless you have oodles of time to program your own that is. The more I play around, the more I see potential, but there is a bit of a learning curve, particularly with the templates to begin with

I've been checking out TextPattern lately and am REALLY considering using it as a CMS for some or all of my sites. It's suppose to be very easy to install and template and there is a huge forum for support with lots of add ons.

Here is a showcase site of nothing but sites done in textpattern.

http://txpmagazine.kbbu.de/all_sites/

Looks nice. Do they allow custom header tags? On the few sites I looked at it appeared every page had the same header.

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Originally Posted by Cutter

Looks nice. Do they allow custom header tags? On the few sites I looked at it appeared every page had the same header.

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Can you elaborate one what you mean? From the sites I looked at, no two were alike.

I actually installed it last night. It's very very easy to install...and if I'm saying it's easy then you know it's VERY easy. As far as using it...well that's a different story. I am finding out it has a pretty large learning curve. I've read a lot of posts lately were people said it took them a month or so to get used to everythign and a good 6 months to get it working with all aspects of their sites, but after they got it working it was amazing. So I'm going to try and stick it out and see what happens, simply because it looks very good.

I'm not talking about sites, I mean unique header tags for individual pages on a site.

So you're just talking about like <H1>, <H2>, etc? Header tags like that...how could they be customized?

Personally, I can't stand TextPattern. Every time I've tried it it's just been easier to use WordPress, and there've been bugs and issues right outta the box.

So are textpattern and wordpress more or less the same? I've read a lot that you can do a lot more with TextPattern than you can with WordPress.

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Originally Posted by deronsizemore

So you're just talking about like <H1>, <H2>, etc? Header tags like that...how could they be customized?

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I'm sorry, I meant title tags <title> </title>

I recommend solutoire, it a nice and free Dreamweaver extension for WordPress. Although it have some bug, but it Support for 90% of the tags.

I have been getting into custom WP themes too. I made one for my weblogs and I discovered it looked horrible in Firefox, so I just revamped one of site - www.thetvremote.com - I am going to roll it over to the other designs,

I just need to switch to tableless layouts when I get more proficient at CSS.

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Originally Posted by Cutter

I'm sorry, I meant title tags <title> </title>

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There is a plug-in that allows for better <title></title> tags :)

Optimal Title - Its a nice little plug-in.

I really like wordpress. It has a bit of a learnign curve, but once you get past it, it's quite flexible. I've been using it for my blog for a long time, and over time I've customized it a fair bit, including conditionals inside the loop based on page, some categories sorting in reverse order, displaying different bits of info based on category, and "read more" links changing based on category, etc. It's gotten to the point, though, that I've done so much customization I don't want to upgrade, for fear of having to redo it all.

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Originally Posted by KelliShaver

It's gotten to the point, though, that I've done so much customization I don't want to upgrade, for fear of having to redo it all.

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I had thought about this, and have tried to keep all my modifications inside my custom theme, and not modify the actual code in any way. This should make it pretty straight forward to upgrade right?

Probably. I'm probably imagining that it's going to be mroe work than it would actually be. I'm just worried about plug-in compatability and having to rewrok changes in the theme.