Rome was not built in a day and so the wordpress theme is, creating the professional wordpress theme is not an easy job until you get some experience with it. You can begin your development by creating simple themes and then add useful features to make it a premium one. It may take weeks or even up to a month to create the professional wordpress theme but if you really want to make money with wordpress theme development then you should be dedicated to it. Here are some useful resources to create professional wordpress theme.
Also read:
- How to Know Which WordPress Theme Does a Blog Use?
- Top 5 Online Tools to Check the Responsiveness of Your Blog
Think Before You Ink
Creating the professional wordpress theme needs some groundwork, first of all you need to decide what kind of template you are about to create, whether it should be a blog theme, corporate theme or creative theme.
How do I Convert HTML website to a WordPress theme?
Once you decide about the layout of your theme, you can actually start with your theme development in your favorite HTML editor and then you can convert it into WordPress theme. If you are already familiar with HTML, CSS and PHP then you can easily convert your HTML template to WordPress theme. Here are some resources on converting HTML website to WordPress theme.
- Developing Your First WordPress Theme [wp tutsplus]
- WordPress Theme Tutorial 2nd Edition [The ThemeShaper]
- Create WordPress Theme from Scratch [YouTube video by JREAM]
- Building WordPress Themes From Scratch [By Joe Casabona]
What Features Should a Professional WordPress Theme include?
There is lot of difference between a simple wordpress theme and professional wordpress theme; Here are some features that a professional wordpress theme should be incorporated with and the resources to implement the respective features. A premium wordpress theme should-
Be Responsive to fit in any device including desktop, tablet and smartphone
- There are many responsive frameworks available on the web, you can choose from Bootstrap, 960 Grid System, Less framework, Foundation or YAML etc.
Have a responsive image slider on the home screen
- Of course you should incorporate a responsive image slider so that it should perfectly work with your responsive wordpress theme. ResponsiveSlides.js jQuery plugin comes handy to create responsive image slider.
Have a responsive navigation
- Your theme’s navigation should automatically turn to a combo box when it is viewed on tablet and smartphones. Thanks to Viljami Salminen, he has developed a jQuery plugin called TinyNav.js which is just 443 bytes in size, this plugin integrates your navigation menu inside a combo box.
Have an attractive portfolio page
- Portfolio page makes it easy for your clients to show off their works neatly, you can use thumbnail grid for portfolio page.
Be Retina ready for the latest Apple devices
- What is retina ready? Retina display is a technology introduced by Apple inc. which serves sharp images instead of blurry images even on higher pixel ratio screen. It was first introduced in iPhone 4s. You can utilize retinajs open source script to make your theme retina ready.
Serve responsive YouTube and Vimeo videos
- You should also care about the responsiveness of YouTube and Vimeo videos, Fluidvids.js is a worthy plugin to achieve this.
Final Thoughts
Most of the wordpress theme developers just assemble the components from various sources to build a good looking theme, I just want to share a useful tip with you in final thoughts i.e. whenever you open a theme in themeforest just scroll down to “Credits” section, most of the developers share the resources they have used in their theme, you can use the same resources to add a professional touch to your wordpress theme and make it more attractive. I use the same method to know what components a premium theme uses.