Have you ever wanted to try your hand at modifying or creating your own Wordpress themes? Maybe you thought it would be ridiculously hard to do or far beyond your scope of knowledge, but modifying Wordpress themes and templates are not quite as hard as you might think.

Do You Know Your HTML?

There are a few things you should take into consideration if you’re looking to get started modifying themes and that is, how good are your HTML skills? HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and it is used in every webpage in order to be able to display your sites content. If you are new to HTML should have a look at basic tutorial that covers the basics of understanding HTML and how HTML markup tags are used to communicate your website and its design to your visitors.

HTML Tutorial For The Absolute Beginner

How Much PHP Do You Know?

Wordpress also relies heavily on php scripting in order for it to run…without php…no Wordpress, so make sure to at least have a mild working knowledge of the php scripting language and use it as a reference when designing your own themes. Here’s a really good step by step tutorial for those who are beginners with php:

PHP Tutorial For The Absolute Beginner

Don’t Leave Home Without Some CSS Skill

Lastly, you will need to have a good working knowledge of CSS which stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Every Wordpress theme and template has one. Without it your website HTML would be displayed with nothing but a white screen, and all of your text would be on the left hand side with blue highlighted links and that’s about it. There would be no graphics, no fancy fonts, no centering, nothing unless you specified it in your theme’s CSS file, if you had one. CSS is the partner-in-crime to the HTML coding of your theme, and you can’t have one without the other so make sure to add learn CSS to your list of things to do. The great news about CSS is that the learning curve is really small and once you’ve played around in a few Wordpress themes you will see that they all contain pretty much the same style elements so once you have the knowledge stored in your brain you will be good to go. Here’s a good CSS tutorial for the absolute beginner:

CSS Tutorial For The Absolute Beginner

Installing Wordpress Locally

One last thing you should take a look at is installing Wordpress locally on your computer. While it’s not absolutely necessary, it should be considered by anyone who is serious about working with, and modifying Wordpress themes and templates. Installing Wordpress locally on your computer will give you a playground to test your newly modified and newly created themes without having to put them up on the Internet, so nobody sees them but you. I myself tweak, modify, create and play with all sorts of Wordpress themes because I’ve installed Wordpress locally on my computer using a little program called XAMPP and my favourite text editor Notepad ++. I’ve written an excellent tutorial regarding how to set up Wordpress locally on your computer and you can check it out over at Squidoo by following this link:

Installing Wordpress Locally On Your Computer – A Squidoo Lens Tutorial

Please don’t be frightened by the length of the tutorial, it’s actually quite short once you take a good look at it. It contains very detailed step by step instructions that even the newest Wordpress user would have no trouble following.

Well that’s it, I hope you learn to make and modify Wordpress themes using these tips and you can send me an email anytime letting me know how you made out with these tips and especially the Squidoo lens. I will do my best to help you with any questions you might have and until next time people…have fun playing with Wordpress.

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• CSS is your friend (charity-lynn.com)

In order to be able to load files up to your web space you are going to need an FTP program which stands for File Transfer Protocol. While there are many programs available out there some are overly-complicated and some are trial versions with a limited time and loads of advertising built in.

When I transfer files to my web space or server, I want it to be easy-to-use, fast, and advertising-free so that’s why I use FireFtP. It also has the added bonus of integrating right into two of my favorite web browsers, Firefox and Flock. Once FireFTP is installed in Firefox or Flock you will be able to use it right there in your web browser with a click on the toolbar icon.

Here’s how to Install FireFTP in Firefox and Flock browsers:

If you don’t have Firefox yet you can download it here:

If you would like to try the Flock browser you can download it here:

Step 1 – Open Firefox or Flock browser and download FireFTP from here and let it auto-install. Restart your browser when prompted to do so.

That’s it…FireFTP is now installed in your Firefox and Flock web browsers..pretty simple hey? Now that you’re rockin, let’s set it up!

Here’s how to setup your website FTP using FireFTP and Firefox or Flock:

Step 1 – Once your browser restarts you should now see an icon of a purple seahorse in your toolbar, if you don’t see it, you can always access FireFTP by clicking on “Tools” and FireFTP will be in your drop-down list so click on it.

Step 2 – You will now see a new browser window that looks like an application with a set of two windows on the left with a listing of your computer’s files and folders. The two windows on the right side of the screen will be blank as they are your web server file listings but we haven’t set up or connected to it yet.

You can view a screenshot here

Step 3 – Consult your hosting company’s welcome email as it will have your FTP details listed in it. It should look something like:

FTP address: http://66.103.3.5
FTP username: the-username-you-signed-up-with
FTP password: something-secret-your-hosting-company-came-up-with

Step 4 – Now it’s time to create your FTP connection so you can upload your files to your web space. Have a look at the top bar of the FireFTP application, you should see “Create an Account” at the very top and that is what we will be doing so click on “Edit” beside it

Step 5 – An Account Manager window will open and the first piece of information you need to enter is in the Main Details. The cursor should already be in the Host field and you need to enter the FTP address your hosting company provided to you

You can view a screenshot here

Step 6 – Did you notice that when you typed in your FTP address that the Account Name was automatically filled out for you with the FTP address? You can leave it like that or you can name it something you like such as your actual domain name

Step 7 – Now you need to enter some information in the ID section of the Account Manager. For the The Login field enter the FTP username your hosting company provided to you and you also need to enter the FTP password provided to you by your hosting company. When you’re done click on the OK button at the bottom of the Account Manager window

Step 8 – You should now see the account you just made listed in the little drop-down window. Click on “Connect” and if everything went smoothly, it will take a few moments to check your username and password and your web server files should load into the two windows on the right side of the screen

Congratulations, you’ve just set up your FTP account in FireFTP for Firefox and Flock! Now you can upload and download files to your web server to your heart’s content…kudos to you![ad#post-top]