Making Your Own WordPress Themes with Artisteer

One of the great things about WordPress is its ability to control the look and layout of a site with a theme. A WordPress theme primarily consists of the PHP and CSS files necessary to display the pages of a WordPress site. Lots of websites let you buy themes or download free ones.  Some themes are simple while others are very customizable.  I have spent hours searching for just the right theme for a site, wishing I could just make my own.   In the past, making your own theme required a good bit of knowledge, but with Artisteer that has changed.  You can use Artisteer to generate a custom theme for your WordPress site without any PHP and CSS knowledge.

Artisteer is a desktop software product that will generate a theme for WordPress as well as Drupal and Joomla. You can use the Artisteer GUI interface to specify all the details of the theme and Artisteer displays in real time how the theme will look. Here are some of the aspects of the theme you can control.

• Colors & Fonts
• Layout
• Background
• Sheet
• Header
• Menu
• Articles
• Blocks
• Button
• Footer

I was pleased with the level of detail I could specify for each of these areas.  For Example, in Background, I can specify an image or texture, glare, gradient, fill color or use an image I provide.  I found more details to specify in each area than I knew existed.  If you are creatively challenged, Artisteer will make suggestions for each option or for the whole theme.  It also use color themes or sets to help make a consistent palate for your color choices.

I have only found a few limitations.  I wish Artisteer had more layout options.  The layouts include a header and footer, a content area and one or two sidebar columns. Within this structure I have lots of choices, but I would like to be able to add more areas above and below the content.  I also wish Artisteer supported alternate page layouts.  You can add these manually after Artisteer generates the theme, but it would be nice if you could specify and generate them.  These relatively minor issues do not greatly impact the value of Artisteer.

I have found the themes generated by Artisteer easy to modify.  I am no PHP or CSS pro, and I was able to make changes to the themes to make them look the way I wanted.  The PHP code and the CSS were clean and organized. When I had questions or issues with the tool, I used the Artisteer product forum and got good answers back.

I highly recomend Artisteer.  I have found it has made it quick and easy to generate a theme that looks the way I want.  I have used it to generate quite a few themes.

Artisteer has recently release version 2.1 of their product.  They provide a Home & Academic version for $49.95 or a Standard Edition for $129.95.  If this review was helpful and you are interested in Artisteer, click on the image  below. (Yes, they have an affiliate program, so I get paid if you use this link to make a purchase.)

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