Do I need to develop the blog templates from scratch in my new theme?

M., NASRI
(@mohammednasri)

4 years, 3 months ago

Hello everybody,

I aim to begin developing some themes, with custom page templates and a custom style for the WP blog.

To create the page templates, I think I will simply use a composer or a builder and it would be enough.

However, all my concerns are for the blog. Do I need to hardly coding its templates (archive, article, category, sidebar, search, etc)?

Or may I reuse an existing theme (like the twenty* ones) by extending them with a child theme or by directly making modifications on them?

I will be thankful for you feedback.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

Moderator t-p
(@t-p)

4 years, 3 months ago

Theme Handbook

RossMitchell
(@rossmitchell)

4 years, 3 months ago

The quick answer is to choose an existing theme as your parent and then customize it. Effort put into researching which parent to start with is well rewarded as all the features it provides are inherited completely.

When it comes to customizing page templates, start with a copy of the parent’s template file in that role, details on how they are derived and named here:
https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/template-files-section/page-template-files/page-templates/
https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/basics/template-hierarchy/

Thread Starter M., NASRI
(@mohammednasri)

4 years, 3 months ago

Hello,

Thank you t-p for your prompt reply, I already checked the theme handbook, I do follow the guidlines it provides for the development of my theme, but I did not found an answer to my question inside.

Thank you RossMitchell, your answer is more useful to me, but if I want develop new themes for sale, is it a good idea to provide only child themes? or rather whole themes?

Thank you in advance.

RossMitchell
(@rossmitchell)

4 years, 3 months ago

Thank you RossMitchell, your answer is more useful to me

Useful is the goal.

but if I want develop new themes for sale, is it a good idea to provide only child themes?

There are some child themes in the marketplace, which I find surprising. Usually these have a theme framework as parent which is never used raw. Of course the reason against buying child themes is that there is no such thing as a grandchild theme, hence three different aspects of theme customization are impacted:
– customize style.css, effective alternatives are the customizer and plugins
– customize functions.php, viable alternative is to put code into a plugin
– custom page templates, no other option, the clients will have to manage their own backups and updates.

From your initial query:

Do I need to hardly coding its templates (archive, article, category, sidebar, search, etc)?

The template docs will show you how specific these are and how they fall back.

Thread Starter M., NASRI
(@mohammednasri)

4 years, 3 months ago

Hi,

So if I understood correctly, I’d better provide a standard theme rather than a child one if I wants users to easily customizing it (which is often the case).

Regarding my initial query (the most important one), my question was not about how to create templates but whether I must coding them from scratch (listing page, search form, article content, etc.) or I can reuse an existing code such as twentyseventeen theme (as an example).

Is my question clear ?

RossMitchell
(@rossmitchell)

4 years, 3 months ago

Yes a standard theme is more marketable.

When I create a custom page template, I start with a copy of that template from the parent theme. I browse various themes for inspiration to see how they hang the pieces together.

Thread Starter M., NASRI
(@mohammednasri)

4 years, 3 months ago

Ok, thank you very much.

Wish you a nice day.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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