Building WordPress Themes with Dreamweaver

WordPress themes can be easily built with Dreamweaver, you just need to right tools for the job. These tools and Dreamweaver extensions can help you create the code needed to design your ultimate WordPress theme.

	UltimateBlogger Wordpress Theme UltimateBlogger is a free theme for WordPress that we based on the Xtremeblogg framework and used different styling. It has plenty of pre-styled widgets, with many styled for both the left and right sidebars to give you the most flexibility. It's designed to be used with AdSense and affiliate ads, but the code is commented and can easily be removed. It's a 960 pixel (approximately) layout and we do have the Fireworks file used to create the theme, so if you want to create a new color scheme or graphics, contact us and we can send the file via email. Download UltimateBlogger theme
	Xtremeblogg Wordpress Theme Xtremeblogg is a WordPress theme we designed recently. It's a 960 pixel widget-ready, AdSense-ready 3-column theme with all the default WordPress widgets pre-styled. We hate when you download a theme just to find out that the widget calendar or search box hasn't been styled. The theme includes a pre-styled 160x600 AdSense box on the right sidebar. All you need to do is insert your ad code between the div tags and you're set. Download Xtremeblogg theme

TAGStention for Dreamweaver

TAGStention is a very good Dreamweaver extension for creating custom WordPress themes and templates. It includes features such as wizards for tags with parameters, support for 90% of the WordPress tags, inserting basic loops, inserting headers, and support for Ultimate TagWarrior.

Download at solutoire.com

Dreamweaver extension for WordPress Templates

This Dreamweaver extension adds a toolbar to your menu for inserting commonly used WordPress code snippets. It includes the PHP code objects for Vcard, loop, header, include and others.

Download at vikiworks.com

Quick primer on customizing WordPress themes in Dreamweaver

Here's a quick tip for customizing WordPress themes in Dreamweaver. When you find a theme you like but you want to change some of the CSS code or graphics, simply open the theme in your browser. Save the page to a file on your local hard drive and then open the page in Dreamweaver. As long as you saved the entire webpage, including images and CSS, you should see the page in Dreamweaver as it displayed in your browser (plus some of Dreamweaver's design-mode quirks).

Now you have what you need to customize your theme. Simply edit the CSS file in Dreamweaver to your liking, and then save the CSS file back to your theme directory. If you changed any of the graphics in the WordPress theme, you will also need to upload those to your hosting server. When you preview your theme, it should display in your browser as you edited it to look in Dreamweaver.

This technique works for any visual changes, but if you need to change the actual structure of your theme, such as the PHP includes, you will need to edit the actual theme files within your WordPress installation. The CSS file controls the visual elements, but the page structure is defined in your page files.