{"id":4449,"date":"2014-05-17T08:58:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T08:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/demo.momizat.net\/goodnews\/?p=108"},"modified":"2014-05-17T08:58:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T08:58:06","slug":"wordpress-theme-development-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bulandrashtrawadi.in\/?p=4449","title":{"rendered":"Improve WordPress Theme Development Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is so much to learn about WordPress theme development. The Internet is home to hundreds of articles about building WordPress themes, to countless theme frameworks that will help you get started, and to endless WordPress themes, some of which are beautiful and professional but not a few of which are (to be honest) a bit crappy.<\/p>\n

Rather than write another article on building a WordPress theme (which would be silly, really, since any theme I build would fall into the \u201ccrappy\u201d category), I\u2019ve asked some of the top theme designers and developers<\/strong> to share some tips and techniques to help you improve and refine your theme development and design process.<\/p>\n

\"splash\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before we get into that, Mark Forrester, cofounder of WooThemes<\/a>, has shared some insight into his firm\u2019s development process. Given WooThemes\u2019 success, no doubt we can all learn something from it.<\/p>\n

A Peek Into Woo<\/h3>\n

Whether you work in a large theme shop or are a lone designer, you can learn plenty<\/strong>from another designer or developer\u2019s workflow.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A theme at WooThemes starts life on the ideas board<\/a>, through specifications provided by the community or based on a concept that\u2019s emerged from customer research. It is designed either in house or by an industry-leading designer who is hired on contract.<\/li>\n
  2. The theme is then meticulously designed in Photoshop. All of the major elements are styled and the pages constructed before any code is touched<\/strong>. Mark recommends Photoshop Etiquette<\/a> for guidelines on structuring your design file. He says, \u201cThe better the Photoshop file, the easier the theme build.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. Once the design is approved, it\u2019s assigned to a developer, who works from WooThemes\u2019 base theme. This includes the templates that come with every WooTheme, along with basic styling. The base theme has a responsive layout, and the CSS is managed using LESS<\/a>, which Mark strongly recommends.<\/li>\n
  4. Theme development is managed with Trello<\/a>, and milestones are set withTeamGantt<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  5. Once the theme is finalized, the developer creates a demo for the website that is populated with dummy content and that tests almost every element of the design.<\/li>\n
  6. The team sets about beta testing the theme. A list of bugs, tweaks and solutions is compiled, a hackathon is scheduled, and everything is completed by the developer.\"A<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. For WooThemes\u2019 own redesign (which is awesome \u2014 congrats, guys!), the team started to use BugHerd<\/a>, which helped them gather user feedback and track it directly in the pages.<\/li>\n
  8. All revisions are included in the change log for easy reference. A strict numbering convention distinguishes between bug fixes and new features.\"A<\/a>
    \n    Larger view<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That\u2019s a lot of process right there. Creating a WooTheme theme is about much more than knocking out a few lines of code. Here\u2019s what Mark has to say:<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen we create and edit our themes it is not simply diving into the code. We have to carefully consider our community of users and how any code might impact their usage, and the template files\u2019 customization ability.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Apart from workflow, what else can be learned from professional theme designers and developers?<\/p>\n

    Develop Locally<\/h3>\n

    If you\u2019re not developing locally, then now\u2019s the time to start. Here\u2019s what Chris Coyier<\/a> has to say about it:<\/p>\n

    \u201cDesigners and developers who work mostly on WordPress sites are, in my experience, the worst offenders of the \u201cjust do it live\u201d development system. FTP commandos, if you will. I know \u2014 I was one for a lot of years. I suspect it\u2019s the case because there are quite a few requirements to run a WordPress site locally: an Apache server running PHP and a MySQL database.<\/p>\n

    These things aren\u2019t preinstalled on most computers like they are on most servers. Even if you get over those hurdles, setting up a workflow between local and live isn\u2019t trivial.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Luckily for you, Chris is going to show you a better way. Developing locally is easy to get started with.<\/p>\n

    STEP 1: SET UP MAMP<\/h4>\n