August 17, 2009
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10 Tips On How To Impress Others By Building A Killer WordPress Theme

Posted in Wordpress by Alex | Tags: 10 tips, template, theme, Wordpress
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Ever wonder why others are so successful when building a WordPress template? Well the answer for that is simple, they build it for a cause, and most of the time they build it because they want to give something useful to promote their work. Follow closely on how to impress others by building a killer WordPress template.

Tip #1: Preparation

Prepare in advance what you want to build, make a sketch and try to be very very original. Use the illustrative images and original phrases. Write everything down on a white paper within steps.

Tip #2: Brainstorming

Try and figure out what you need to do that no one has ever done before. Start thinking ahead of the competition and think what are they missing.

Tip #3: Building the theme

Try and don’t rush it, get creative and take your time with it. If you speed it up it will end looking bad. Try and refine every aspect you find a little weird. But in the same time stay original.

Tip #4: Build your idea of a great typography

Typography is one of the most important aspects of your blog, so pay attention to it, also you can follow Mark Boulton’s steps on creating the best typography: Five simple steps to better typography.

Tip #5: Firebug, a tool I can’t live without

Whenever I find a great design, I want to find out about what markup are they using so firebug makes my life easier. You can download the Firefox firebug plugin here.

Tip #6: make your blog stand out with icon sets

Icon sets make your blog more full of life so I tend to use them in almost every design I make. Email icons, RSS, social networks and more icons will make your design to be more user friendly and fun. you can download 35 of the best free icon sets over at SmashingMag, but I tend to use the PI Diagona Pack.

Tip #7: Design your blog header

The first thing a user sees on your blog is the blog header, so it is a very important piece of the theme. be shure and make it as representative as possible. Also you can download some free blog header design here.

Tip #8: Improove your design with the ultimate hacks

Again, SmashingMag compiled a list of the most awesome WordPress theme hacks that you can implement effectively in your wordpress theme.

Tip #9: learn hot to build a WordPress theme option

You can follow any of these tutorials that I compiled into a list, and find out how you can effectively build a custom theme options page. This tip only applies when you are bound to sell the theme or you are sharing the blog with a more inexperienced person.

Tip #10: Embed everything

Make it easy for yourself right from the start and try to embed every application you could benefit a link from, like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, the RSS Feed, and so on. I tend to insert my links first before I convert my static CSS site into WP.

Hope you liked these tips, I often use them when I`m developing stuff. Now if you don’t know how to make a WP theme check out this post: WordPress mockup tutorials the best.

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