Creating an effective custom theme for your website or blog might seem like a daunting task at first. When you take a look at the files inside a “commercial” theme it sure seems like there are a lot of files. I mean… a lot of files! It is easy to take a look… and be overwhelmed. Thankfully, themes can be pretty easy to create once you understand the basic building blocks; the required template tags, a couple functions here and there, and a few php template files. After that, it’s all about adding other features… like a “sidebar” widget or two, a couple custom fields, a featured image, and a loop or two. This session helps you make sense of the code and files you need to make a simple theme… and some of the features you can add on to make more advanced themes. It also dives into the template hierarchy, custom template files, useful functions, child themes, and customizing loops via wp_query, get_posts and query_posts (if we have time). Lots of code will be demonstrated, so it is best that you have a good foundation in HTML at least.