A Practical Handbook for WordPress Themes

This is the free web-based version of my WordPress themes book “A Practical Handbook for WordPress Themes”. It is also available on Kindle. Updated from the original print version (2014), and now applies to any WordPress version from 3.2 on up to latest 4.6.1!

An overview

By the end of the book, you will know more about themes than many veterans of the WordPress community! This book covers all aspects of WordPress themes from selecting the one that is right for you, installing, maintaining, backing up, troubleshooting, swapping and removing themes, and more!

Many WordPress themes are not as straightforward as their marketing pages make them out to be, and can be time-consuming. To save you time (and money!) we will go over everything you need to know about themes, and present it in a fun and easy to understand way. There is no knowledge of coding required to be successful with this book.

This book is for self-hosted WordPress sites, but can also be very useful for those hosted on the WordPress.com platform. Throughout the book I make the clear distinction of which section applies to self-hosted sites and or those hosted by WordPress.

This book is great for all levels of experience with WordPress—from just starting out, to those that have run a WordPress site for a few years, and even veterans that want to gain a much deeper understanding of what is going on with this critical part of your site. Since you can’t have a WordPress website without a theme, everyone should understand what they are, how they work, and how to make them work for you.

What you’ll get from reading this book

  • Explain what a WordPress theme is, does, and doesn’t do.
  • Show you how to choose a free, premium or custom theme—that looks good and works well—for you or your client.
  • Explain what happens when you install, activate or delete themes.
  • Show how to protect your website and data with theme maintenance and backups.
  • Explain what to plan for when switching themes.
  • Show how to test a new theme.
  • Show how to remove themes, and explain why you should not store old themes.
  • Go over ways and best practices to work with theme developers.
  • Learn how to troubleshoot your theme.
  • Get answers to most frequently asked questions (FAQs).
  • And ultimately, the confidence and knowledge to work on your own WordPress website.

Table of contents

The following chapters are coming soon.

Can't wait? Get the full Kindle version now.

Chapter 11. Dealing With the Required and Recommended Plugins for WordPress Themes
Chapter 12. WordPress Theme Maintenance
Chapter 13. Principles of Modifying a WordPress Theme
Chapter 14. What Happens When We Switch a WordPress Theme?
Chapter 15. Uninstalling/Deleting A WordPress Theme
Chapter 16. Oh Crap, I Broke It. (Installing the Backup)
Chapter 17. Shooting the Troubles
FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
Glossary of Terms Used in This Book
Resources