Hey! I’ve told you before, that I’m gonna make my own WordPress theme.. yes, I’m serious about that. After take a look at codex.wordpress.org, I found that they have nice documented of sources for theme development.
There are many resources listed on where to learn about HTML/XHTML, PHP and CSS. But, what most important thing they didn’t mentioned there are the tools to get start with. So, while studying these coding things, I’ve prepared myself the tools to use in making my theme. Here they are,
 1) WordPress 2.6 |
 2) XAMPP – An application that install Apache webserver, PHP & MySQL on my computer. So, I can install WordPress & test it locally. For Windows, I use XAMPP Lite which have minimal requirement for running WordPress locally. And I installed XAMPP complete version on my Ubuntu Linux. Get it at www.apachefriends.org. |
 3) Notepad++ – An opensource text editor for hardcoding. Its like Windows Notepad but with more great functions. You can download it at www.notepad-plus.sourceforge.net. |
 4) Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.5 & Safari for Windows – For checking either my theme display correctly or not on these popular browsers. I don’t have Mac, hopefully Safari for Windows will do the testing jobs and my theme will display correctly on Mac. For my favourite browser Firefox, I also installed Web Developer extension..this is really excellent Firefox’s add-ons for web design especially for local code validation. |
 5) GIMP – This is image manipulation program like Adobe Photoshop, but being an opensource software…its free. Get it at www.gimp.org. |
 6) Inkscape – This is another great opensource software, its a vector graphic editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. Get it at www.inkscape.org. |
I think that all the essential tools I need in developing my own WordPress theme.
Thank you for this information.