Mainly, there are mainly three options to create a custom Theme in a WordPress template.
- Modify an Existing Theme.
- Adapt an Existing Theme.
- Build a Theme from Scratch.
WordPress themes are made up of a collection of files, all contained within a single folder that includes in wp-content/themes/.
1.Modify an Existing Theme.
This is one of the easiest options for Custom theme creation. If you want to make some minor changes, like colors, font sizes, or simple layout changes, this is the preferred method.
In this case, your best option is to create a child theme. A child theme references an existing theme, just modifying the bits you want to change. Using a child theme has the advantage that, if the parent theme is updated when you update WordPress, your changes won’t be wiped away.
To create a child theme, create a new folder inside your /themes/ folder.
Tip: Use the name of the parent theme with -child appended, as this makes it clear what the child theme is.
In this child folder, you need at a minimum of
- style.css file
- functions.php file.
In these files, you need to add certain code to tell WordPress which is the parent theme, where the stylesheets are, and any other new functionality you want in your child theme. The last step for getting your child theme up and running is to enter the WordPress admin panel and go to Appearance > Themes to activate your child theme.
2.Adapt an Existing Theme.
Copy-paste the theme which you feel similar to the theme you want. And Dig into the copied theme files and remove elements you don’t need and add others.
For example, you might want to alter the HTML structure of the theme. To do so, you’ll need to open various files such as header.php, index.php, and footer.php and update the HTML parts with your own template elements.
It can take a bit of searching around to work out which files contain the elements you want to delete or move, but it’s a good way to get familiar with your WordPress theme to dig into the files like this.
3.Build a Theme from Scratch
This method is to create your own theme completely from scratch.
The main thing is you need to include basic files like:
- index.php
- function.php
- header.php
- footer.php
- style.css
In this example, we’ve created a folder in our themes directory called /scratch-theme/. The style.css file will serve as the main stylesheet of our WordPress theme. In that CSS file, we first need to add some header text. This is a basic example:
/*
Theme Name: My Scratch Theme
Theme URI: https://sample.com
Author: Karishma kk
Author URI: http://kari.com
Description: Just a sample theme
Version: 1
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Tags: clean, starter
*/
Choose and add relevent commend on header of this css file.