The Ultimate Roundup of WordPress Tutorials, Themes and Guides

14 May 2010

WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today. Also developers number is growing so every developer is interested with WordPress development to offer better products for his clients. One of the great things about working with WordPress and developing your own themes is the community and all of the resources that are available. If you’re not sure how to do something or looking to see what solutions other theme designers and developers are using, you can find plenty of information and tutorials to help.

Today, I prepared a good selection of the best resources to learn this wonderful blog and CMS covering every thing from books, tutorials, tricks and tips … Hope you will enjoy this collection !

WordPress Essentials and Basics:

This section includes some official resources for the WordPress community and some general articles that will help you to get more out of your development for WordPress.

Installing WordPress – This is an official WordPress.org tutorial showing how to install WordPress. Also if you want to install it locally you can take a look at this Installing WordPress Locally.
WordPress Support Forums – If you need anything or you have something going wrong with your WordPress blog you can always ask for information.
WordPress Docs – This WordPress.org section contains everything you need about WordPress to get started.

You’ve Installed WordPress, So What’s Next? – A great overview of steps you should take after you’ve installed WP.
The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up WordPress after an Install – A complete guide to what to do once you’ve installed WP, from Pro Blog Design.
10 Things to Do After Installing WordPress – A list of 10 must-do steps to take after installing a fresh copy of WordPress.

WordPress Theme Roundups, Theme Templates, and Theme Frameworks:

Below you will find a wide variety of theme roundups, theme frameworks for building your own themes, and premium theme sites.

Theme Frameworks:

WordPress PSD Framework – A free PSD template that includes all the common elements in a WP design for you to build on.

WordPress Theme Generator – An online theme generator that doesn’t require any coding knowledge.
Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content – A downloadable bundle of sample WP content that includes posts, tags, categories, and pages to make theme development easier.
Blank WordPress Themes Ready for 2.7 Up for Grabs – Offers up a couple of free, empty themes you can download.
Blank WordPress Themes – A collection of two and three-column blank themes from Refueled.
Thematic – This is one of the most advanced theme frameworks available.

Carrington – A free WP CMS theme framework that includes two browser versions and a mobile version.
Hybrid – Justin Tadlock’s framework that features 13 page templates, 15+ plugins supported within the framework, advanced breadcrumbs and much more.

Themes And Templates:

41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes – A roundup of beautiful free themes.
16 Free Premium WordPress Themes That Don’t Suck – An awesome roundup of free premium-style themes.
140+ Brilliant Free WordPress Themes Around – A roundup of some excellent free WP themes.

17 Free and Best WordPress Themes – A small roundup of excellent WP themes.
3-Column WordPress Theme Gallery – Includes a large number of excellent 3-column themes.
45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts – An excellent roundup of free magazine-style and grid themes.
40 Awesome and Fresh WordPress Themes – A good collection of well designed WordPress themes.

90+ Best Free WordPress Themes – This collection contains over of 90 great wp themes.
15 Fresh WordPress Themes to Get the Coolest Portfolio for You or Your Studio – A collection of portfolio-styled WP themes.
10 Minimalist WordPress Themes You’ll Love – A collection of ten minimalist themes, some of which aren’t commonly seen.
25 Simple and Minimal WordPress Themes – A great roundup of minimalist themes.
60 Great WordPress Themes – An excellent, recent roundup of gorgeous WP themes.
25 Best Free WordPress Themes – An absolutely amazing roundup compiled by EliteFreelancing.com of gorgeous WP themes.
14 Most Visually Appealing Free WordPress Themes – A small collection of beautiful and elegant themes.
Best WordPress Themes Collection – A roundup of excellent paid WP themes.
10 Best Free WordPress Themes You Haven’t Seen – A great collection of seldom-seen WP themes.
30 Free Magazine/Grid Style WordPress Themes – A compilation of 30 excellent magazine and grid style WP themes.
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – An excellent roundup of high-quality themes from Smashing Magazine.
83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen Yet – While this post is a couple of years old and you probably have seen many of the themes on it, it’s still a great roundup of gorgeous designs.

45+ Must See WordPress Themes – A categorized roundup of themes compiled by Noupe.
WordPress Rainbow: 35 Colorful Free WordPress Themes – A great roundup of bright and colorful free themes.
22 Free and Unique WordPress Themes – A recent roundup of themes not seen very often.
Great Green WordPress Themes – A wonderful collection of WP themes with a green color scheme.
25 Free WordPress Themes (2009 Edition) – A roundup of some really beautiful and different themes.
25 Artistic Themes for WordPress – A great roundup of artsy WP themes.
15 Portfolio Themes for WordPress – A great roundup of themes perfect for portfolio sites.
65+ Free Exceptional WordPress Themes Worth Investigating – A great roundup of gorgeous themes compiled by Tripwire Magazine.
50 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes – A roundup of stunning WP themes.

Now Let’s move to the best sites where you can find premium and free WordPress designs and templates:

WordPress.org – The official theme repository from WordPress, with nearly 1,000 free themes available.
Top WP Themes – A directory of free themes, many with a corporate or professional look.
Themes2WP.com – A categorized directory with more than a thousand themes.
Elegant Themes – Another great premium themes site that allows unlimited access for less than $20.
WooThemes – Offers paid themes in a club format, though you can also purchase individual themes.
Obox Theme Shop – A premium theme site with some really awesome themes available with single-site licenses or developer licenses.
StudioPress – Premium WP theme site that lets you download themes individually or as a package.
NattyWP – Another club-based premium themes site.
ThemeForest – One of the best sites where you can buy premium WordPress themes.

Theme Development Tutorials:

The tutorials listed here will walk you step-by-step through the process of creating a WordPress theme.

Designing for WordPress: Complete Series & Downloads – This is a series of video screencasts by Chris Coyier. It is a three-part series which covers downloading and installing WordPress on a server all the way to a completed theme.

So You Want to Create WordPress Themes, Huh? – This tutorial is from wpdesigner.com showing how to create WordPress themes.
Creating a WordPress Template – Here’s a tutorial series for creating a WP template.
How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch – Part 1, Part2 – This is a step by step tutorial from nettuts.
How to Create WordPress Themes from Scratch: Part 1, 2, 3a, and 3b – This is another step by step tutorial from themetation.com.
How to Create a WordPress Theme in 5 Minutes – This tutorial shows how to create a WordPress theme in few minutes.
How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial – This tut demonstrates how to build a powerful, up-to-date, WordPress Theme from scratch.

Developing a WordPress Theme.
Dissection of a WordPress Theme – Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4.
How to Create a WordPress Template or Theme.
How to Write Your Own WordPress Theme – A complete tutorial for WP theme development.

Tutorials and Tips :

There are far too many tutorials and hacks for theme designers and developers to list here, and a number of excellent collections have already been put together by other bloggers. Above you will find some of the best tutorials and other collections.

Tutorials :

Create An Awesome WordPress Theme Options Page (Part 1) – A tutorial for creating a theme options panel in the backend of WP.
WordPress Loop: Get Posts Published Between Two Particular Dates – A great guide to retrieving and displaying posts published during a specific time frame.
How to Edit WordPress Themes Using Dreamweaver – A great guide to theme editing with Dreamweaver.

Leopard: How to Install WordPress – A tutorial for creating a local installation of WP on Mac OS X Leopard.
Premium WordPress Theme Design Part 1—The Photoshop Mock Up – The first in a series of tutorials for creating a premium-style WP theme.
The Power of WordPress Custom Fields – A great overview for working with custom fields.
Customize Your WordPress Login – Learn how to customize the look of your WP login screen.
Things You Should Know When Using Post Excerpt – An overview of things to keep in mind when using the post excerpt function in WP.
WordPress Custom Fields; Laying Text Over Your Lead Graphic – A tutorial that shows you how to add a text overlay to your graphics.
5 Useful WordPress Functions You Didn’t Know Existed – A rundown of five great WP functions most people have never heard of.
Power Tips for WordPress Template Developers – An excellent resource from Smashing Magazine of advanced techniques useful to template and theme developers.
How to: Make a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme – A tutorial for creating a customization menu in the backend. for your WP theme.
WordPress Ajax Commenting Revisited – A tutorial for creating your own ajax comment system.
WordPress Screencast Tutorial—Photo Captions – A video tutorial for adding captions to your photos.
How To: Adding an Author Page to Your WordPress Blog – A fantastic tutorial for creating an “about the author” page on your blog.
Turning a Web Template into a WordPress Theme: A Video Tutorial – A video tutorial for turning virtually any website template into a WP theme.
Styling Your WordPress Comments – Learn to style your comments to better complement your site’s design.
Displaying Author Meta Information in WordPress 2.8 – An excellent tutorial for displaying the meta information included about authors within the front-end of your WP site.
Tutorial: Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress – A tutorial for adding unique data to your posts using custom write fields in the backend.
Display Thumbnails for Related Posts in WordPress – A tutorial for displaying the WP-generated thumbnail images for your posts in a related posts list.
How to Set Up Pretty Permalinks in WordPress – A guide to creating pretty permalinks from ThemeLab.
Multiple WordPress Page Layouts in One Single Template – A tutorial that shows you how to create more than one page layout without having to resort to separate templates.
Build a Newspaper Theme with WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework – A complete tutorial for building a news-style theme.
HOW TO: Create a jQuery Carousel with WordPress Posts – An excellent tutorial for creating a carousel to display WP posts from a specific category.
Customize WordPress Theme to Match an Existing Website: A Step-by-Step Blog Integration Tutorial – Create a WP theme that matches an existing website design for seamless integration.
How to Only Show Posts With a Specific Custom Field – A quick tutorial for showing posts with content in a specific custom field.
Create a Plugin With Its Own Custom Database Table – A tutorial for coding plugins that need to have their own custom db table.
How to Add Sidebars to a Theme – A very basic tutorial for theme developers.

Collections :

WordPress Plugins :

WordPress Plugins and Tutorials – A great roundup of categorized plugins, with a few articles and tutorials included at the end.
Top 10 Characteristics of a Great WordPress Plugin – An excellent guide that should be referred to by anyone developing, or even just using, WP plugins.
12 WordPress Plugins for Theme Development – A great list of plugins essential for theme developers.
Top 35 Plugins of WordPress to Share Your Blog Post – A great roundup of plugins that make it easier for your visitors to share your blog’s content.
13 of the Best WordPress Plugins – A list compiled by David Airey of the best WP plugins, including All in One SEO Pack and cforms II.
6 Best Facebook WordPress Plugins – A collection of six plugins for integrating your WordPress blog and your Facebook profile or page.
20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress – A collection of great plugins to improve your SEO, compiled by Mashable.
30+ Must Have WordPress Plugins – Another roundup of essential WP plugins.
10 WordPress Plugins Guaranteed to Save You Time – This is a great collection of plugins compiled by Six Revisions to make you a more efficient blogger.

70 Best WordPress Plugins to Supercharge Your Blog – A comprehensive list of awesome plugins, including Broken Link Checker and Comment Timeout.
The Best WordPress Plugins – A short review of some of the best WP plugins out there.
30+ Plugins for WordPress Comments – A great roundup of comments-related plugins compiled by Mashable.
10 of the Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins to Choose From – A roundup of some of the best contact plugins available.
Top 30 WordPress Plugins That Are Actually Useful! – An awesome roundup from Speckyboy Design Magazine of incredibly useful plugins, including FireStats and WASABI Related Post.
20 New, Useful and Promising WordPress Plugins – A roundup of twenty great WP plugins.

Tricks and Hacks :

9 WordPress Hacks to Encourage User Interactivity – A great collection of hacks for getting your visitors to interact more, including showing the most recent comments and reversing the order of your comments so the newest ones show up first.
9 Useful Snippets for Your WordPress Functions – A collection of handy snippets you can add to your functions.php file to add functionality to your blog.
5 Great WordPress Hacks – A small roundup of hacks, including sending pages to Twitter and listing all of the authors on your blog.
13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area – A compilation of security hacks for WP admin.
10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme – A great rundown of theme customizations that make your site more user-friendly.
10 Most Wanted Category Hacks and Plugins for WordPress – A great rundown of category hacks, including displaying the most recent posts within a specific category and excluding certain categories from being displayed in a loop.
10 Awesome .htaccess Hacks for WordPress – A great collection of .htaccess hacks, including removing/category/ from your WP URLs and how to redirect visitors to a maintenance page.
10 Killer WordPress Hacks – A roundup of great hacks from Smashing Magazine, including displaying AdSense ads only to search engine visitors and replacing the “next” and “previous” page links with pagination.

30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks – This post from Hong Kiat shows more than thirty new hacks and tricks to customize your WP installation.
40+ Most Wanted WordPress Tricks and Hacks – A roundup of great hacks compiled by Hong Kiat.
30+ (More) Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks and Hacks – Another roundup from Hong Kiat of great WP customizations.

WordPress Books :

There is a good number of WordPress books but I recommend the books above :

Digging Into WordPress
A book by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Digging into WordPress is the best book I have seen for WordPress designers and developers. I have the PDF version, but a print version is now available as well.

How to Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer
A great book from Envato written by Collis Ta’eed and Harley Alexander.

WordPress Cheat Sheets :

50+ Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes and Plugins – A huge roundup of cheat sheets and references for theme and plugin developers.
13 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes – A great roundup of cheat sheets helpful to WP theme designers.
63 Essential WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats – A great roundup of WP resources.
The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet – A PDF WP cheat sheet.

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Tags: best resources, CMS, developers, frameworks, official resources, theme designers, theme templates, ultimate guide

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