Couple of questions about creating a Wordpress theme.

Envato Authors Theme Authors
1

Hi folks!

I’m Andrei and, for some years, I’ve been working as a front-end developer, including a Themeforest account where we had 11 HTML Templates ( it went well I’d say )
Now I’m pretty much trying to make my way into Wordpress Themes, so I’ve got a few questions for those with some experience in this domain that are willing to help a little.

I’m thinking at, maybe, a small theme with couple of pages and a portofolio page ( custom post type ), with a nice and creative design.

Here are my questions:

  • Is it better to use a starter theme ( or a framework? ). Because I saw one, called RunawayWP, which gives free features like layout manager (some kind of drag and drop builder ), custom post types, a bootstrap starter and so on, which are critical in creating a good Wordpress theme. Here’s a link if it’s allowed: http://runwaywp.com/add-ons

  • Should I use plugins or functions directly into my theme, when coming to different features ( let’s say custom type for example because as far as I know you can add them easily using a plugin, or create them manually in functions.php ) ? Are plugins exported with the theme as well? or how does it work?

  • Child theme? How does that work? You create one after your theme is finished, so customers will customize it using it’s child?

  • Any insides minding the whole Themeforest approval process (I’m strictly reffering to WP Categories, since I’m familiar with others ). What are some requirements for a smaller theme with not so spectacular features in it?

  • There’s a thing that’s bugging me. How do you create multiple layout pages for portofolio posts? ( using Isotope, let’s say 3 templates with a 2/3/4 items grid , or a combined one? ). And one more reffering to this one, how can you make them filterable? and as a default set-up I saw that you have to decide how many posts you show per page, how can you create a Load more button? ( like, after 20 portofolio posts, you can a button allowing to show more, instead of having more pages and going to the next one ).

I think this somehow sums up my startup questions, thanks a lot for anyone that’s giving me any kind of help, answers and so on.

Much appreciated, cheers!

2

Great questions.

I am in the same position and would love to know the developer-side requirements such as Theme Check, W3C, etc.