A Path Less Taken

With our header and footer done let’s take a look at the sidebar. Open the sidebar.php file in the yourblog\wp-content\themes\welcome folder for editing. Enter the code below into the file and save it.

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<div id="sidebar">
	< ?php 
	wp_list_bookmarks ('categorize=1&category_orderby=name') ;
 
	print "<li><h2>Archives</h2><ul>" ;
	wp_get_archives (array ('type' => 'monthly', 'format' => 'html', 'show_post_count' => false, 'echo' => 1)) ;
	print "</ul>" ;
 
	wp_list_categories ('title_li=' . __('<h2>Categories</h2>') . '&show_count=1') ; 
	?>
</div><!-- close sidebar -->

Now that we have had some success with the header, let’s create the footer for our Welcome theme. Open the footer.php file for editing. You can find it in the yourblog\wp-content\themes\welcome folder. Type the following into the footer file and save it.

Let’s get this show on the road. First I want you to create 3 new empty files in your Welcome theme folder. Remember it’s at yourblog\wp-content\themes\welcome. You need to create these 3 files:

1. header.php
2. sidebar.php
3. footer.php

Once those are created you need to open your index.php file in your theme folder for editing. You are going to type in the following information.

By now you’re saying stuff to your cell mate like “let’s build a bloody theme already!” We are almost there. There is one more thing I need to cover before we dive into the code. DIV’s!

Don’t expect all these parts to come so close together, but since I am still on a role from last time I wanted to dive right in and talk about WordPress Template Tags and Functions. I know that some of you couldn’t wait and you are already out there digging around in your other WordPress themes only to discover they are filled with items like get_header () and the_content () and other funny stuff. Now you are asking yourself what the heck are these things and why do I even want to bother building my own theme. I can’t answer the second question, but I can take a stab at the first.