WordPress themes are the easiest way of establishing your website on WordPress. As you may know, WordPress holds 78% of total websites on the internet. You can easily get a ready-to-use WordPress theme from a web development company. 

But if you want to create your own WordPress theme then it’s a whole different road to take. For creating WordPress themes you need to know about it all. Here we are offering you five easy steps towards it.

Let’s dig in!

Step 1:- Local Environment!
To create your own WordPress theme, first you need to create the environment for it. It means you need to install and prepare your device for WordPress theme creation. For this you need to install a server. Here we recommend you to use Desktop Server. 

By using this local server you will be able to create your own WordPress theme without impacting your current website. The Desktop Server provides an easy way to install WordPress. It is compatible with Mac and Windows system as well. 

First, you need to install a free version of Desktop Server and complete the registration process. Then download the installer. After that you will need to configure the local environment. You will get the basic WordPress site ready for you in a few minutes. After the installation your new website will look like your live one.

Step 2:-Get The Starter Theme!
The starter theme is exactly what it sounds! It’s a starter structure for you to mold your WordPress themes. At such platforms, you will get the tools to build a strong base for the WordPress theme. It will minus the efforts of coding from scratch. There are few companies to trust with it. They are Underscore, UnderStrap and Bones. 

Here we are going to use Underscore. It is a great choice for beginners and provides basic tools for building WordPress theme. Underscore is developed by Automatic and it has received great reviews from customers.

To create WordPress theme on Underscore, you need to go to the website of it. Put the name of your WordPress theme on the bar as ‘Theme Name’. If you want to add some extra features to it, you can click on Advanced Options. There you will have to fill out the information like, author name, URL and description of it.

Below these options you will find a box name _sassify! It stands for Systematically Awesome StyleSheets i.e SASS! SASS is a proceeding language juts like CSS. With this you will be able to use variables, math operation and nesting as well. 

After filling out everything, click on Generate. This will download and save the .zip file of your starter theme. Now install this starter theme on your local site. Take a preview to have a rough idea on how the actual WordPress theme would look like.

Step 3:- WordPress Works!
Before making the Cake we tend to taste one or know what goes inside it. Just like that, before making WordPress theme you need to know how it actually work. Underscore will ensure you to have these basics while creating WordPress theme. 

Website or a WordPress themes is basically about using different templates the right way. The templates used in the theme decide its whole look. The templates like header.php or comments.php initiate the features they state. 

WordPress already has the template hierarchy where you can get any template you need. This hierarchy is also the sequence how the WordPress will be loading your website. Every WordPress theme has to have inbox.php file. Underscore can provide you with it. 

Loop is also one of the most important elements to have in WordPress themes. The Loop is a code WordPress uses for displaying the content. You can find this template in the post content. Underscore will help you with it, but we recommend you to study more about the loop.

Step 4:- Configuration-
In this step you will have to do some additions and deletions. You need to figure out how you want your WordPress themes to look like. For this, there are couple of things to look into. 

First is Hooks! You can add some functionalities into your WordPress themes by adding Hooks. Hooks is the code snippet you will find in templates. These will help you run PHP functions. 

wp_head() is the Hook which you can add in <head> for header.php. This will enable the style, script and other information that come up first after loading website.
wp_footer() is the Hook for footer.php before </body> tag. This hook is often used by Google analytics. 

You can visit Hooks Database for more information about it. Underscore will be adding all the hooks in your WordPress theme.

The second most important configuration is adding styles with CSS. The Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) is all about the display of content. You can add it by style.css.file but it will add only the basic ones. The CSS is very important factor in WordPress theme as it manages the content. Before going into editing the CSS you have to know it completely first. We recommend you to do some research on it. 

Step 5:- Export and Upload-   
This is the final step in creating your own WordPress theme.  After making all the alterations you want to in your WordPress theme, its time to test it. You can take a preview of your WordPress theme if you want. For this you can use Theme Unit Test data. It is a dummy data to test your WordPress theme.

Now, to export your WordPress theme you need to find the folder where the .zip file of your website is saved. Find the files for WordPress theme. You can use the compression tool WinRAR to create a .zip file of it. For this right click on the file and find a tab for Compress and click on it. This will create a zip file of the folder. You can now easily upload and install it on any WordPress site.