Creating Your First WordPress Theme

Creating Your First WordPress Theme — a practical guide to create WordPress theme with clear examples you can reuse in real projects.

WordPress Theme Development Series (6/96). Prefer one article? Read the complete WordPress theme development tutorial.

Short description

WordPress requires at least `style.css` (with header) and `index.php` for a classic theme to appear and run.

Steps

1. Create wp-content/themes/mytheme/.
2. Add style.css with a Theme Name header.
3. Add index.php, then activate the theme.

Minimal theme files

mytheme/
  style.css
  index.php
  functions.php (recommended)