Theme Editing 101

If you can write a post, is there really any reason why you don’t know anything about editing your WordPress theme? John H. Gohde guides bloggers through what everyone should know about editing their own theme.

First of all, making just one mistake can cause your entire Web site to go completely blank. Thus, editing your theme should always be taken very seriously.

 

Step #1: Backup Your Theme

Download your theme to the computer that you are connecting to your Web site with. And, get into the habit of periodically backing your theme up. In the event that anything goes wrong, you always want to be able to quickly restore your theme to a point where it was once working.

 

Step #2: Make Only One Change At A Time

Until you are extremely confident as to what you are doing, always make only one change at a time. Then view your Web site. And, be sure to reload / refresh your webpage so that you are looking at a fresh copy of your Web site that actually is reflecting your latest change.

 

Step #3: Practice On A Safe Part Of Your Blog

Find out exactly how you blog displays your webpages. To do this, simply select everything with a Control-A command and then paste it into any text editor. And observe how your blog lists out its home page.

An unoptimized theme will usually display as follows.

1. Page Header
2. Left Sidebar
3. Center Column
4. Right Sidebar
5. Page Footer

While a really optimized theme would display as follows.

1. Page Header
2. Center Column
3. Left Sidebar
4. Right Sidebar
5. Page Footer

In other words, if you started practicing on your page header and made a mistake, your entire Web site would go completely blank. Think about it. The first thing that your blog would display is your page header. If the Page Header cannot be displayed, then nothing can be displayed. Whereas if you started practicing on your Page Footer and made a mistake, then only your Page Footer would disappear.

John H. Gohde advises every one to start practice editing on their Page Footer or Footer (footer.php) template, followed by their right sidebar or what is usally called the sidebar2.php. The Page Header or the Header (header.php) template is the most dangerous one for an inexperienced editor to tackle, and thus should be avoided.

From a previous post, everyone should attempt to add code that will activate the print page plugin as follows, after first having installed the respective plugin. Naturally, similar code from almost any other plugin would do just as well. The most logical place to put this type of coding would be on top of the right sidebar.

missing source code

If your right sidebar has not gone blank on your blog, then you have succeeded. And, you should congratulate yourself on a job well done.