WordPress is one of the most commonly used web content management systems. In fact, this system software accounts for more than 40% of all live websites.
Developing a custom WordPress theme is possible for beginners as well as those with more experience in web development. It can be a powerful way to differentiate your site from the competition. If this is what you aim to do, this article lists ten of the best WordPress theme development courses to help you build a custom website.
Before exploring these options, it is essential to understand what skills are required to successfully develop WordPress themes.
The Skills Needed to Develop a WordPress Theme
A combination of technical skills and WordPress framework knowledge is needed to learn how to develop a WordPress theme, as listed below:
- CSS
- HTML
- PHP
- WordPress Core Concepts
- WordPress Development Environment
- WordPress Theme Structure and Files
The Top 10 WordPress Theme Development Courses of 2024
People who want to develop their own website on WordPress can do so with a little online research. To make the entire process easier, we have analyzed multiple theme development courses on offer to select the best ten options.
The courses shown below have been listed in ascending order, with the most-reviewed choice provided last.
10. Step-By-Step Child Themes for New & Existing WordPress Sites
Students who enrol in the Step-By-Step Child Themes for New and Existing WordPress Sites course do not require any experience, making it a good option for a beginner’s guide. Although a basic understanding of WordPress would be beneficial, it is unnecessary. However, it is essential for students to have self-hosted websites.
With these sites, Christine Maisel’s course will cover what’s needed to develop a child theme on WordPress, ways to find and customize CSS code, and the activation of child themes. It will also teach how to build a child theme for an existing site and how plugins can be used to create child themes.
Despite only 278 students enrolling in this course, it has gained a 4.7 average star rating from more than 40 reviews.
9. The Essential WordPress Theme Development Course
The course by One Month has been designed for individuals wanting to work in freelance web development and companies wanting to expand their reach online. It provides a vast amount of information that can help people achieve their goals, and it can all be learned in as little as four weeks.
Students will be able to use advance custom fields, author tags, comments, date tags, functions, loops, navigation menus, and other core aspects to create a brand-new WordPress theme. By the end of the course, they will also be able to edit CSS on an existing theme.
More than 5,500 students have signed up for this course, which has received a 4.1 star rating from 161 reviews.
8. Complete WordPress Theme Development Course
If you have zero WordPress experience, the Complete WordPress Theme Development Course could be the best option for you. Participants do not need any coding experience, and any software used is completely free. This course makes entering the world of WordPress theme development incredibly easy.
The lectures in this course will cover:
- How to set up for coding.
- Ways to save and display page content from the MySQL database.
- Coding for PHP, HTML, and CSS,
- The best practices in WordPress development.
- And so on.
Roughly 2,400 students have used the Complete WordPress Theme Development Course, and it has received a 4.4 average star rating from 615 reviews. Many of these reviews mentioned how the teacher from Upskill Courses explained concepts well and offered sound advice throughout the course.
7. The Complete Guide to Building Premium WordPress Themes
Despite being best suited to those with experience in programming and the right equipment, this course is a comprehensive guide to becoming a WordPress themes expert. It supplies all of the skills and knowledge you will need to build superior WordPress themes to sell on specific marketplaces, including:
- How to develop a translatable theme.
- Gain an understanding of child themes to modify your own creations.
- Learn the steps to ensure your theme is compatible with Gutenberg, the WordPress editor.
- Supplement your theme by building relevant plugins.
- Etc.
As previously mentioned, this course will benefit more experienced individuals. Students should have an understanding of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and PHP. This knowledge will be used to develop WordPress themes that meet the coding and security standards of WordPress and Themeforest.
One of the 6,235 students who completed this course said, “I’ve learnt lot of things here. The instructor is very helpful. I got support from him lot of times…” This shows that the course is of good value and that the instructor will assist students in their success, as other reviews have mentioned. The positive feedback comes from more of the 743 ratings, which earns the course an average of 4.4 stars.
6. WordPress Theme Development from Scratch 2.0
This course, created by Marcelo Xavier Vieira, is one of the most up-to-date options on this list, having been updated in September 2024. Participants will gain knowledge of the fundamentals of WordPress theme development, enabling them to build themes and earn extra income. This will include:
- Creating custom WordPress themes from scratch.
- Using JSON files to transition from classic to block themes.
- Migrating sites to live servers.
- And more.
However, it is not recommended for beginners. The class description on Udemy states that the instructor does not “recommend this course if you have never written a line of code before.” It is better suited to those who already have experience in the web development field or companies that train employees to develop their WordPress sites.
Students who take this course can ask the instructor questions, which will be answered within 24 hours. One past participant found it “very helpful” that the instructor actually responded to student queries. Several of the 995 reviews mentioned the Q&A feature of this course, which has received an average star rating of 4.8.
5. Learn To Create WordPress Themes By Building 10 Projects
As the name of this course suggests, students who enrol will learn how to build WordPress themes by completing ten projects at different levels. This will include covering the foundation skills with the Simple Theme before taking on the Advance Theme, Business Theme, and seven others. The course aims to help people create unique websites, which can be difficult with such a diverse online variety.
Learn to Create WordPress Themes By Building 10 Projects, created by Eduonix Learning Solutions, requires a basic understanding of CSS, HTML, PHP, and WordPress. If you have this knowledge, the course will teach you:
- The process of creating WordPress themes.
- The design and programming required for theme creation.
- How to make money by selling WordPress themes.
This course has been used by more than 15,000 students, earning it a 4.4 average star rating from over 1,000 reviews. One review found this to be the “best course for beginner web developers.”
4. Professional WordPress Theme & Plugin Development
The Professional WordPress Theme and Plugin Development course on Udemy guides students through the procedure for building websites, themes, and plugins from scratch. It is focused on helping those with zero experience with WordPress theme development and uses real-world projects to help these individuals learn.
Students must have a code editor and a local server, but the course’s creator lists free versions for ease of use. However, some reviews have stated that the instructor does not answer questions, although other students provide a lot of support. This same reviewer quickly found employment in WordPress development after beginning this course:
“…I did watch all the videos and I coded the first project. I am in the process of coding the other three projects now, but I have learned enough so far to get a part time job working on an attorney’s WordPress site…”
This is possible because of the topics taught in the course:
- Understand WordPress theme development.
- Build a WordPress theme using Twitter Bootstrap.
- Good practices in WordPress theme development.
- Convert PSD files into WordPress templates.
- Advanced features like custom fields and custom post types.
- Etc.
Over 6,000 students have taken this course, which has received an average of 4.3 stars from more than 1,000 reviews.
3. Complete WordPress Developer Course 2023 – Plugins & Themes
Claiming to be the “most comprehensive and effective course,” the Complete WordPress Developer Course includes all the information anyone would ever need to know in relation to themes and plugins. Despite being dated 2023, the teachings in this online course are still very relevant, as one of the most recent reviews explains:
“This course is an absolute delight. The instructor explains very clearly concepts that sometimes are really advanced, and you always end up understanding it all perfectly. The value you get for its price is infinite. The best course I found up to the day to learn modern WordPress!”
People who sign up for this course can expect to discover:
- Change a static HTML template to a fully functioning WordPress theme.
- Learn the best practices for writing effective and reusable code.
- Adequately take advantage of the template hierarchy system and create your custom templates for more unique designs.
- Build plugins that expand the core functionality of WordPress.
- Design custom post types to give you the flexibility to curate your desired content.
- Discover the different methods for creating custom admin forms and securely processing the data.
- And more.
This course has received a 4.6 average star rating from over 2,000 reviews and has been used by more than 18,000 students.
2. Complete WordPress Theme & Plugin Development Course
Although this course requires students to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, it teaches everything from constructing custom themes to building plugins. It was created by Zac Gordon, one of the most experienced educators related to WordPress.
By taking this course, you will learn about:
- PHP for WordPress
- Working with child and starter themes like a pro
- The template hierarchy
- Using JavaScript and CSS in themes
- And more.
This course has taught over 20,000 students who are said to become hirable WordPress developers once it has been completed. It has an average star rating of 4.5, with one reviewer stating, “…What is great about this course is that the instructor introduces functions and what they do like get_template_parts(); which is very important in navigation to know where the code comes from…”
1. WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Course
The best WordPress theme development course is WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Course. Produced by Brad Hussey, this step-by-step course will teach you how to build and launch a responsive WordPress website from the outset. It uses Bootstrap, the world’s most favoured mobile responsive web design framework, to ensure sites are mobile-friendly in a quick fashion.
The course will help you:
- Discover how to convert static HTML and CSS sites into WordPress themes.
- Begin theme building with Bootstrap.
- Understand PHP, the scripting language that WordPress is written using.
- Utilize the WordPress “Customizer” tool, which allows editing the visual aspects of websites.
- And more!
Brad Hussey’s course has been used by over 50,000 students and received over 8,000 reviews, earning an average rating of 4.2 stars. One review said that WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Course “…is a perfectly concise course to quickly get you all the tools you need to develop a great WordPress site, with all the customization you need.”
Another student commented:
“One the greatest things about it is the repetition and practice you’ll get using fundamental, core WordPress development techniques like the loop. As you’re actually going through the process of creation step by step with Brad, you get to do those things multiple times yourself. By the end, your keyboard hands will be looping in their sleep.”
However, some reviews mentioned that the instructor’s pacing can be very fast, and pausing is recommended to ensure all the notes are written down correctly.
Which is the Best WordPress Theme Development Course of 2024?
Whether you have your website to work on or wish to sell developed themes to other WordPress users, understanding WordPress theme development has many benefits. If this is a skill that you would like to learn, then it’s essential to find the best teacher – or, in this case, the best online course.
One of the most effective ways to determine the best WordPress theme development course is to read the reviews of previous students. In this article, the courses with the most reviews have been listed in ascending order, with the most-reviewed course shown last. The average star ratings and some reviews have also been provided to inform your decision better.
Using this data, we can determine that the best course for WordPress theme development is WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Guide. This course offers students a comprehensive guide on how to build WordPress themes and convert CSS and HTML sites into themes.