Through out the years creating various themes, I’ve found some wonderful resources to help get through the process as efficiently and effectively as possible. There are a lot of elements to creating a nice, clean theme and everyone has a different approach.

WordPress Theme Author Resources

In my experience, I’ve found it helpful to group all of my resources together. I have a theme dev folder with all of my templates and checkoff sheets. It is also very helpful to have a good procedure and routine when you’re creating a theme. Anything to accellerate your process accurately and efficiently will prove to make your work more profitable.

Organizing your process is always smart and can make a huge impact on a projects success. Included in my resource list below, I will cover items that can quickly improve efficiencies in your development cycle. I have also included tools which appeal to my personal style but can also be helpful for you and your teams.

Official WordPress Resources

Lets start off with a bit of the resources created and offered by the WordPress community. From communication mechanisms to template examples, WordPress has to be one of the most well documented, open source platforms on the market today.

WordPress Codex

Just starting out? Are you trying to make a specific template change? The blog design and layout section of the Codex is the ideal starting point to finding answers for your theme and WordPress design related questions.

Theme & Template Forum

If you have a specific question that you can’t find in the Codex, give the WordPress.org Theme & Template Forum a go. If you have a question, there’s is a good chance it has already been answered, take your time and search the forum.

WordPress Test Content

You will find this as a section in the WordPress Theme Development Checklist but I wanted to highlight its importance. Have you ever needed test content for a WordPress site? Follow the instructions and download the XML file included in the post. This is a great way to test every element of your blog posts. It includes all of the necessary components to test everything in the checklist.

WordPress IRC

Along side the forum and other official resources, WordPress hosts various Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. If you’re looking for more real time collaboration, this is the route for you.

Grid & CSS Frameworks

With the success of WordPress, it is being deployed in just about any website situation you can think of. Here are a few design guides and CSS grid systems I find useful.

960 Grid System

Figuring out the right dimensions for your next design…an important concept right? 960 Grid System has taken the guess work out of this crucial step of your design process with their system. This effort will help you streamline your development process and provides all of the templates you may need to ensure a nice grid based design.

Blueprint CSS Framework

I can’t begin to explain how much time Blueprint has saved me styling my designs. The download package includes a CSS reset, form and print styles, and is a strong typography driven framework. Blueprint is also plugin ready for buttons, tabs, and sprite support.

YUI 2: Grids CSS

The YUI Grid CSS is a mature framework with a lot of options. It supports fluid layouts and multiple preset fixed layouts. With a fairly large following and good support, you’ll find they provide a great cheatsheet for your CSS Reset, Base, Fonts, and Grids.

Theme Frameworks

With all of the other resources we’ve been talking about, it’s all about streamlining the process. If you have a solid foundation you can reuse for your theme creation process, it’s always better to work smarter, not harder. Using a good theme framework will enable you to do just that. Here a few great choices to get you on track.

Thematic

The folks over at ThemeShaper really hit it on the head with Thematic. They have built in 13 widget-ready areas, some grid-based layout samples, and even some styling for some popular WordPress plugins. Newbies and seasoned developers alike can’t miss with Thematic.

Sandbox

Sandbox framework is a collaborative effort created by Andy Skelton and Scott Wallick. They’ve done a wonderful job to create a flexible foundation to anyone building a new theme. Sandbox is widget ready and valid XHTML 1.0 (Transitional). All it needs is some good old fashioned CSS love to grow into your next theme.

WP Framework

Another solid starting point for theme developrs is WP Framework by Ptah Dunbar. This framework is highly extendable, flexible, and very modular. WP Framework has a great following and Ptah has done a wonderful job with continued development of the solution.

You may find that adjusting one of these frameworks or creating your own is beneficial. Here is a short list on WordPress.org.

Checklists & Cheat Sheets

There definitely is no shortage of WordPress theme checklists and cheat sheets out there. A good theme really comes down to the little details, these reference sheets will help assure you don’t miss something important.

WordPress Theme Checklist

If you decide down the road you want to become a theme contributor on WordPress.org, this is a must. This checklist contains all of the required elements that need to be completed for acceptance into the Free Theme Directory.

14 Essential Wordpress Development and Design Cheat Sheets

A great compilation of WordPress cheat sheats compiled by Speckyboy Design Magazine. This is probably the most comprehensive list of help and cheat sheats on the web for WordPress theme development.

10 Checks to the Perfect WordPress theme

A major resource to the WordPress community in many ways, Joost de Valk also has a quick list of items to check for. This list is helpful to theme authors, as well as for anyone looking to purchase a premium theme.

Conclusion

There you have it, a list of resources for the newest theme author, to the seasoned veteran theme geek. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way to approach a new theme project. These tools have helped me become proficient and hopefully they will help you too.

Are there any tools missing from the list you’d like to see added? Do you have a favorite framework or resource you’d like to discuss?

If you have something really slick that we missed make sure to leave us your comments.

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