First wordpress blog, should I make my own theme for maximum customizability?

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I am, although still extremely n00by, a semi-competent web designer and developer and I have decided to start a blog. I have heard all about this WordPress phenomena and I am really excited to give it a try!

Now, I really want my blog to stand out, and from what I can gather, installing WordPress locally gives me full customizability as I have the freedom to ‘create my own theme’ so to speak. Is that the correct terminology, first of all?

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Also, I’ve heard that by installing WordPress locally, it removes the limitations of having a ‘paid’ or ‘free’ version. This would make sense since it is on your own PHP server.

How difficult is this to do? I’m assuming you create a design, and integrate the WP features through PHP?

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks!

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2 comments

  1. Hi welcome to the world of WordPress. 🙂

    My answer is a bit indirect…

    I think before you even start thinking about creating a theme, you should really understand how to create content in WordPress through writing blog posts, pages, how to edit the navigation bar, how to activate themes/plugins, and how to use the settings like the permalinks. A great site to learn all this stuff relatively cheap are the video tutorials WP101.com.

    Before you can really start creating a them you’ll want to know what it takes to make a good theme and the only way to do that is to use a WordPress for what it was meant for: to create and publish content.

    When you’re ready to create a theme, I’ve heard the following free WordPress framework packages make a great start: Thematic, Theme Hybrid, and Carrington.

    Good luck and great to have you on board!

  2. If you’re experienced with HTML/CSS/PHP but new to WordPress, then just using an existing theme may feel very limiting. The “WordPress” way to get max flexibility but maintaining the training wheels is to create a Child Theme. This will let you modify just about anything you want on the public-facing site, but you don’t have to recreate any wheels. It also means you can keep the theme updated, but still maintain your own templates, functions.php and style.css.