Learn WP Theme Dev

Confidently Build Fast and Modern WordPress Themes Like a Pro

An online workshop course to level up your WordPress theme development skills with modern techniques and best practices.

While you're waiting, you can get my free mini-course on WordPress Hooks sent to your inbox.

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Articles & Tutorials

How to build custom blocks in your WordPress theme

If you’re just getting into block development, deciding where to build your custom blocks can be confusing. Much of the documentation from wordpress.org suggests using a plugin, but in the past you probably stored reusable components directly in your theme. In this blog post, I’ll break down why you probably want to store your custom…

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Add autocomplete to your theme.json file

The functionality of theme.json has been constantly expanding since the feature was introduced in WordPress version 5.8. This means there are always new things being added, but that also means there’s a whole lot to remember! In this post, we’ll talk about a one-line solution to add autocomplete and hinting to your WordPress theme’s theme.json…

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How Alignments Work in Gutenberg

Alignments are a key concept that helps you create dynamic blocks with varying container sizes. In this blog post, I break down how alignments work in Gutenberg and share some tips you can use to leverage this capability to write more maintainable themes and build unique interfaces quickly. What is an alignment? Alignments are roughly…

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Learning how to develop WordPress themes can be daunting.

Getting started can be simple, but if you've never built your own theme before it feel hard to know where to start. So much content is out of date or no longer relevant. Reading the Codex provides information, but not as much context.

Making things to work is one thing, but building something durable that scales can feel elusive. There's so many different ways to do things and it can be overwhelming trying to determine what is best to focus on.

This course will show you modern techniques that will allow you to comfortably develop your own dynamic themes, improve your understanding of WordPress, and gain job-ready skills.

Meet Your Instructor

Selfie of Ian

Hi! I'm Ian. I've been developing with WordPress for over 10 years. During that time I've worked at several agencies (most recently 10up) and have built hundreds of custom WordPress sites. This course represents a collection of all of the knowledge, best practices, and approaches I've put together during my career and I'm really excited to share it with you!

In this course, you'll learn all the skills you'll need to succeed as a WordPress theme developer as well as valuable tactics to create reusable components and dynamic pages without using a commercial page builder.

Topics covered in this course will include things like:

  • Building your own themes
  • Hooks (Actions & Filters)
  • Custom Post Types and Taxonomies
  • Gutenberg Block Development
  • Registering Post Meta
  • Optimizing performance
  • Using the WP REST API
  • Shortcodes
  • Use React with WordPress
  • Deploying WordPress

All course packages will include all code samples and audio transcriptions are planned for all course videos.