WordPress Custom Theme Development Tutorial -Part 2

Basic Templates

At the very minimum, a WordPress Theme consists of two files:

• style.css
• index.php

Both of these files go into the Theme directory. The index.php template file is very flexible. It can be used to include all references to the header, sidebar, footer, content, categories, archives, search, error, and any other page created in WordPress.

Or, it can be divided into modular template files, each one taking on part of the workload. If you do not provide other template files, WordPress may have default files or functions to perform their jobs. For example, if you do not provide a searchform.php template file, WordPress has a default function to display the search form.

Typical template files include:

• comments.php
• comments-popup.php
• footer.php
• header.php
• sidebar.php

Using these template files you can put template tags within the index.php master file to include these other files where you want them to appear in the final generated page.

• To include the header, use get_header().
• To include the sidebar, use get_sidebar().
• To include the footer, use get_footer().
• To include the search form, use get_search_form().