All big companies don’t want to relay on any prebuilt theme from WordPress library because when theme supports ends, they start facing the issues in future update of WordPress versions so it’s important to build custom theme for such clients.
Here is the procedure to create a custom theme which is not based on any theme framework like Genesis, Divi, Themify or Astra. In such theme frameworks, there is a parent-child theme concept.
If you know any theme framework, You got a advantage of prebuilt code, a basic wireframe like header, footer, functions.php etc.. Theme frameworks have some Pros & Cons as well. Check this.
I have already good experience with Genesis & Divi Framework. Both are fabulous but let’s learn how to create a custom theme just because you will get an idea about core theme behavior and just to get the knowledge how core WordPress core functions works.
To start creating a new theme, you need a perfect responsive HTML. So the process is follows:
- First install WordPress
- Create a new theme folder and create index.php, style.CSS and other basic files of theme. Check more here.
- Create header & footer files & insert bloginfo like meta data, title, language, charset etc.
- Copy past the index page content of HTML & header, footer into theme. Load dynamic JS & CSS using functions.php file. Check more here. That’s how you start creating index.php file in theme folder.
- Now start building page.php file. Create dynamic page content and link child pages with parent pages.
- Create dynamic top navigation & footer navigation menu by inserting code in header.php & footer.php file.