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About the Book

Quickly learn WordPress Theme development with this easy to follow, step-by-step guide.

Does working in technology ever feel like you've been dropped into the middle of the forest with no map, no signposts and no help and told to "just figure it out"? Ever wonder where you should begin to get up and running as quickly as possible? Does it feel like the natives aren't really interested in helping you as you're just starting out?

When travelling to a new country, learning to cook or even learning a new language, you don't need an encyclopedia, you need a good guidebook. When learning a new technology, it's also important to have a step-by-step guide to show you were to begin, that can show you the most needed tasks, required concepts and a breakdown that simply explains how it all works. While anyone could "figure it out", usually that's not the most efficient way to learn a new skill or get started building something real.

Your guide book is here.

With Building a WordPress Theme from Scratch, you'll learn:

• How to get your designs and functionality into WordPress
• An understanding how WordPress themes work so you can edit existing themes to your liking
• How to use the latest WordPress features in getting everything to work perfectly
• That you don't have to "just figure it out" and you can save time by getting right to the "Ah-Ha" moments

This book is a step-by-step guide to building a theme from the ground up with the latest WordPress version. We will be starting at nothing and I'll show you line by line how to build in everything you need to make a fully functional and usable WordPress theme from scratch. Whether you're looking to sell the theme or use it for client work, you'll be learning important concepts like:

• What files are required in your theme and which should be!
• How to best segment your design for ease and reuse
• How to get data from WordPress and into your theme
• Gotchas around how WordPress builds HTML pages from your theme and how to work around them
• Understanding how to get control over WordPress to make your designs look and work great

You must already know HTML and CSS but, this book is written for someone with zero WordPress and PHP knowledge. If you're a designer that wants to use the power of WordPress for your websites or a developer that has a HTML and CSS design that you need to skin WordPress with, this book will get you started and finished with as little confusion as possible.

This is a Beta Book

This book is under heavy development and the price is lower than it will be once it's complete. Please feel free to buy it now and let me know how it can be improved. Once it's finished, you'll get all changes and additions absolutly free. I thank you so much for supporting me so early in the process.

About the Author

Joseph Erickson

@firstclown

I'm a web developer and have been doing web programming for over 15 years. When I started, there was no CSS and JavaScript was something you avoided because it barely worked in any browser. My how far we've come.

I'm the CTO of CRE Planning and Development, creators of the RuskinARC Historic Property Management platform. That application is developed in PHP with a MySQL back-end and is used by Miami Beach, FL, Oak Park, IL and Tulsa OK, among others.

I have also been teaching and tutoring programming in groups and one-on-one sessions for over five years. I've taught wide ranging concepts like WordPress development, Ruby on Rails, Java and application development and planning. My style is very informal and focused on getting novices up to speed and building real applications and sites as quickly as possible and in a way that's fully repeatable by them on their own. Many of my students have gone on to build interesting applications and launch themselves into programming careers of their own. I'm now translating those skills into book writing and plan to write focused books to get beginners learning new and valuable skills up and running.