So I just launched my new WordPress theme. This was more playing catch up than a marketing tactic. I have been working with WordPress for almost five years now but have been so busy with client work and freelance projects that I had left my site to rot.

I regrettably was using a theme I tweaked from twenty ten which was clean but didn’t really capture my style or current WordPress theming capabilities. I also have until recently gotten way behind in my writing activities so rebuilding is a good way for me to get involved in my site and the fun in having a WordPress site.

The latest theme is built from scratch using twitter bootstrap and some tweaks I have learned along the way. There is still plenty of things I want to polish on the theme, but I think some of these initial development discoveries deserve consideration if you are building your own WordPress themes.

Tools I’ve recently adopted

Beyond my standard tools { textmate, terminal and a browser } I started working with a couple of new tools in my development workflow.

The Less App for Mac

This is a simple app but when handling several less files from a framework like bootstrap it takes a lot out of the guesswork and helps get a solid workflow. Some less knowledge is needed but after this theme and several of the latest ones at work I’ve found this language speeds up css development considerably and is well worth the effort to explore.

The developer also has another project some of my co-workers and I are testing right now called code-kit which also looks very promising

Twitter Bootstrap

Yes… I know lots of very important well known developers have already talked about this framework. I admittedly have been looking it over for a year and just now am really learning how to use it to speed up my projects and simplify my development workflow.

If you haven’t reviewed this yet, I can’t recommend it enough and I hope to have many more posts in the future discussing techniques to customize it and use it for project specific functionality.

Github

Yes I know this is old news. Yes I know you are probably way cooler and nerdier than me and have been using this for years. I first learned about github and WordCamp two years ago and now finally understand why it is so important. At Integrity we now use git daily to manage all of our development projects. This is an amazing tool and when working in a team setting it makes collaboration more efficient. The secret to using this in my opinion is branching and I plan to write another post soon on my git workflow for WordPress theming.

Search Wordpress.org Codex

Lastly I use an awesome but simple chrome extension that I use constantly for instant access to the WordPress Codex. When I learned PHP the first think I learned was how to search php.net for functions and documentation so that approach has guided all that I have researched and learned about developing with WordPress. This extension allows me to just open a tab and type “wp” + space + “function, term, or keyword” and immediately jump to the source for documentation. I recommend this extension to all of our new developers and hope you too can find it useful.

If you’ve used one of these tools and think their awesome or think they are sub par to a solution you have found let me know via a comment. I’ll be writing again soon time permitting on some of the workflows I’ve developed with these tools and any new finds. Thanks for reading.