No idea what is common but I would never go html->css->WordPress. Writing something (the html) that has to be completely rewritten into a dynamic page makes no sense. If you are going to use WordPress, just start writing the php, which usually means the theme. I guess you have something like design->WordPress.
So you don’t write any html at all then?
I am answering this from my point of view:
of course you need to write html because this forms the structure for the theme’s templates;
however, there is no need to write a pure html/css version first;
once you know the general structure of WordPress templates, you can start with a graphic idea for the theme, and combine html and php (WordPress functions) into one process – and practically at the same time do the rough css formatting.
with other words: the process is not sequential, but all happens synchronously.
you probably have already viewed this Codex chapter: http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
@twentybr, my answer is nearly identical to alchymyth’s. Of course, I write html– a lot of it. That is what the browser needs, but there is no need to write a pure html/css version. The html I write is embedded in the PHP theme templates and plugin files as I construct them, and the css is created at the same time. There is never a pure ‘html/css’ version.
Ok, so an example would be that you take the header.php to start. Add html to that file and then put css in at the same time? Then you move on to the next php file. In what file order do you guys usually work? Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it.
Ok, so an example would be that you take the header.php to start. Add html to that file and then put css in at the same time? Then you move on to the next php file.
No. Stop thinking linearly. You are not building one page at a time as in HTML. You are building them all at once, and a single ‘page’ as it appears in a browser is made up of three or more .php files, plus css, plus maybe javascript, plus other things added by plugins or by the WordPress core– like lots of css “classes” and “ids”, as well as (usually) a fair bit of menu markup and widget markup.
You are going to be going file to file to file and back again. You are not going to be finishing a file then moving to the next one, though the better you can predict what should be in a file the less you will have to revisit it and the better off you will be.
You need to know what you are aiming for. In my case, I usually have sketches (PDFs) from a designer. I print these and work out a page structure. What parts of the page are going to be same across the whole site? What parts are going to change page to page? What parts are only changing on some pages? That kind of thing. This is important and is a bit of an art to get it right, and prevent backtracking and re-doing work.
Then, you really have to start with about four files– header.php, index.php, footer.php, and style.css. I have never made a theme without functions.php either, but in theory it isn’t necessary. The WordPress Theme Review guides also require comments.php and screenshot.png.
Get started. Add things like page.php, or category.php, as you need them, but I caution you against adding extra components until you actually have a need for them. I’d also get familiar with the ‘get_template_*` functions, which are mentioned in the “Review” page mentioned above.
Thanks s_ha_dum. That helps alot.
I found this on css-tricks.com. This is what Chris Coyier does: wordpress theme
This was done in 2009, yet he is an esteemed web developer. Why is he doing all of the html/css first then putting it in wordpress? Have times changed?
Like I said, I don’t know what is common but that approach makes no sense to me. Perhaps he did it that way for the purpose of the tutorial. You sometimes teach things differently than you do them. If I were going to write an article about how to write a plugin, for example, it would probably be quite different than how I actually write plugins, but I don’t know. I can’t talk for Coyier.
