July 17, 2024 — This lesson dives into the theme’s functions file (functions.php) and how you can use it to add your own functionality to a theme. With this lesson, you will: describe the purpose of a WordPress theme’s functions.php file, decide when to use a plugin instead of the functions.php file when developing a theme, and list some common uses of the functions.php file for extending the functionality of WordPress.

July 8, 2024 — We will explore how to create and add template parts to your theme. With this lesson, you will: describe template parts and how they work, define template part areas, and add template parts to your theme.

July 8, 2024 — We will take a deep dive into the details of how WordPress loads templates in a browser. With this lesson, you will: explain how WordPress uses the query string, briefly explain the template hierarchy diagram, and describe the template hierarchy for a given page being queried.

July 8, 2024 — We will cover the purpose, structure and loading of templates. With this lesson you will: describe the purpose and structure of a template, list the sequence templates are loaded by WordPress, and with theme starter files in place, create a template from scratch.

May 23, 2024 — We explore creating style variations or simply theme.json variations. With this lesson, we will define and describe style variations, differentiate between theme and style variation JSON files, and differentiate between a child theme and a style variation.

May 23, 2024 — We will cover the basics of how to create a pattern from scratch and register patterns within your theme. With this lesson, you will list and describe the sources of patterns available within WordPress, add the Patterns property to theme.json and list the patterns to include in your theme from the Pattern Directory, and describe the process of building a pattern from scratch in order to bundle it with your theme.

May 23, 2024 — Using the theme.json file, we will register a custom template we create from scratch. With this lesson, you will build a custom template from scratch and export it to your local theme folder, register a custom template using the theme.json file, and familiarize yourself with the workflow of updating templates using the Create Block Theme plugin.

May 23, 2024 — Using the theme.json configuration file, we will apply styles within your theme. With this lesson, you will explore the style hierarchy, modify theme styles using the Site Editor and export the changes, understand how WordPress uses the JSON syntax to generate CSS in a browser, and configure presets via the settings property and apply them in the theme.json styles property.

May 23, 2024 — We will explore the WordPress theme configuration file theme.json and some of the available options for theme Settings. With this lesson, you will discover what theme Settings are for, explore the Settings available to end users, and use theme.json to control available Settings.

April 26, 2024 — In this lesson we will explore how to use the Create Block Theme plugin for theme development. The learning outcomes are to: describe what the Create Block theme plugin is, and why you might use it, and identify the main features of the plugin and describe their functionality.