Being able to design custom WordPress themes is almost a must for today’s web designers. The fun thing with WordPress is that there’s always something new that you can learn to make the platform work better for you and your clients. These 10 tutorials will teach basic WordPress theming as well as some more advanced skills.

Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks has a three-part video series for downloading and installing WordPress, all the way through everything else involved with designing a custom theme. The example theme that is built through the series is a personalized homepage theme.

Kai Loon wrote this popular series (see parts 1, 2, 3a, and 3b). It’s very detailed and covers designing the theme in Photoshop, slicing and coding, and all of the files involved in the theme. If your looking for a great guide to take you through the etire process of desigining and coding, this is a good place to start.

NETTUTS has a two-part series (see parts 1 and 2) that’s a good resource for new theme developers. It cover the basic files of the theme, including CSS, and the tutorial walks through the development of a basic sample theme.

For a non-traditional or magazine-style layout, this tutorial will take you through the specific WordPress coding that’s involved and you’ll create a simple, but attractive, sample layout.

This is another excellent tutorial from NETTUTS for building a different newspaper layout. Of course, it covers all the coding of the various WP files involved.

This tutorial from Aneko Studios was one of the first ones I read on WordPress theme development. It covers the different files that make up the WordPress theme and the basic coding that is involved with each.

An older tutorial, but still relevant, this is an in-depth series from Urban Giraffe (See parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) that will take you through the entire process of developing a WordPress theme, with plenty of explanation to go along with the code samples.

One Final Resource

In addition to the ten tutorials listed above, the WordPress Codex is also a great resource with loads of information. The section for theme development is a great resource, especially if your new to WP theme development.

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