are WP themes basically all the same?

  • It seems to me that just under the surface, the WP themes are pretty much all the same. Cosmetically they are different — not only in terms of imagery, colors, and fonts — but also in terms of general layout (2 columns, 3 columns, nav up top, down below … etc.) but besides that, the only other real, major difference I can see is in the different kinds of navigation options.

    Am I right about this, or am I totally missing something?

    Thanks ??

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  • Hey, I was thinking this same thing. Or wondering really.

    I do web design/development and never jumped into WordPress until last week and I love it! I am wanting to do my own themes and such and was wondering how people jumped into this and I looked at several themes, downloaded and they almost all have the same files.

    So it seems that it is all CSS and graphics, along with the “extras” you add in and how you make an admin file for the theme.

    look into ‘thesis’ for instance, or ‘lightword’, ‘arras’ or so (just to name a few) and you will see that there are some themes that are very different.
    generally, you are right, on the surface there are very many themes that just differ by a few graphics, are not optimized, not validated, are difficult to modify, look different in every brower, are badly translated, and so on.
    find the ‘diamond in the rough’, and take inspiration from these themes.
    and yes, in the end it is all html, php, css, and graphics …

    they almost all have the same files

    well yeah….WP has standard file names within themes…..you don’t have to use them of course, but naming certain files certain things makes in easy to incorporate into WP

    header.php
    footer.php
    index.php
    page.php
    single.php
    category.php
    etc…..

    These are all WP standards. You can also add onto these with your own templates….or go totally off in your own direction…. Also, what each of these files do can vary pretty wildly….

    So yeah, there are gonna be pretty much the same files, and a lot of the code could look the same….. as in css, html, php….they are all going to use template tags, etc…. but the functionality could be vastly different

    Yeah that is what is so great about WP.
    The hierarchy of the files also make everything “work” a certain way

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