01: Setting up a Local Environment

This is the first lesson in the WordPress Theme Development Course. In this video we cover how to set up a local development environment for WordPress using Local by Flywheel.

If you already have a local development environment set up that you like (using Vagrant, MAMP, Valet, or something else), feel free to skip to the next video. There’s nothing in this series that requires you to use a specific development environment set up. Continue reading

Working on a Theme Development Course

I just started work on video course for learning WordPress theme development. It’s designed for folks who are familiar with using WordPress and would like to start building themes professionally (for clients or for their own work). The plan is to release the entire video series for free.

Since the focus is on professional development, I’ll be covering developer tools as much as actual theme development. Introducing topics like local environments, version control and build tools all together as it relates to WordPress themes will (I think!) be really useful for new developers getting up to speed.

If you or a friend has been looking to move into WordPress theme development, get on the mailing list and I’ll let you know when the first video is available.

Sign Up to Get Notified When the Course is Ready

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How to Modify the Look of a WordPress Site with CSS

If you want to make a few design tweaks to a WordPress theme (and don’t see an option for it in the Customizer), you’ll likely need to use some custom CSS. Thankfully, WordPress has a great built-in Custom CSS module that allows you to safely add CSS code or override existing styles. This gives you almost unlimited design control over a site!

This video explains how to find the selectors in your theme using the Chrome developer tools and then add your own custom styles in WordPress.

Create a WordPress Admin with Code

A few times I’ve gotten into a situation where I have access to WordPress files (via SFTP or other means) but I’m otherwise locked out of the site (my user hasn’t been created or was accidentally deleted). In those cases, the quickest option is generally just to create a new admin user with code.

If I know which theme is active, I’ll generally just drop this code into the bottom of functions.php for that theme, refresh the site once or twice in the browser, and then delete the code (important: make sure to delete it!)

https://gist.github.com/wpscholar/86c236469f3610400f8a
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