How to hone your WordPress designing skills

WordPress is a continually expanding platform that is projected to grow exponentially in terms of usage and impact in the coming decade.

Powering over 25% websites today, from advertising agencies in Dubai to clothing companies, the platform’s popularity understandable leads to an increasing demand for innovative site themes.

It is always a struggle to stand out with your skills in a crowd of competitive WordPress designers.

Though beginner level customizations are fairly easy to grasp and execute, becoming truly skilled as a WordPress designer requires adherence and hard work.

Following tutorials can only get you so far and superior designing skills require much more commitment. Here are some tips on how to hone your theme designing skills:

• Make sure you are well-acquainted with the basics

It is highly recommended that one learns programming languages such as PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript in order to master WordPress designing.

You should also fully acquaint yourself with existing themes and customization options before branching out to theme designing.

• Explore the coding structure

Image source: www.quertime.com

The WordPress Codex is a focal point for all things related to WordPress since it covers almost every feature related to the website and includes a list of valid functions.

Learning WordPress semantics is a must if you hope to stand out. Familiarizing yourself with the coding structure can definitely give you an edge when designing. 

Every company is looking for experienced and high skilled workers who are experts at what they do which means that knowing how to code would shine on one’s designer resume.

• Online Training Courses

Due to the mass popularity of WordPress as a platform to build your websites on, there has been a corresponding upsurge in training programs available online that almost always cost nothing.

Enrolling in some of these courses could prove very beneficial in the long run since unlike textbook knowledge, digital information is more likely to be up-to-date in accordance with evolving ground realities of business. 

• Attend Conferences and Workshops

These are likely to be more costly than online training but workshops can hone your skills much more effectively as compared to just depending on online training programs.

Moreover, WordPress conferences are held quite often to facilitate designers regarding new features and to inspire innovation in theme designing.

Such events can surely act in favor of potential theme designers and allow them opportunities to polish their skills. 

• Know what the viewers like

It is necessary for designers to retain sensitivity to what the audience reception is like since the eventual success of their theme designs depends on this very reception.

This includes keeping up to date with WordPress news as well as engaged with conversion rates and viewers counts.What the audience seems to like can in turn help designers narrow down their ideas.

The interplay of colors, fonts and various graphics in what a designer has at their disposal. The psychological impact of certain colors, text and images can go a long way when it comes to theme designing.

• Social media engagement

Image Source: graydian.com

Engaging with the audience would give developers and designers a fairly good idea of not only the evolving developments in the world of technology but also what the viewers are currently interested in.

Free information sharing leads to a sense of transparency which allows interaction between designers and people. Developers can even get answers from other experts and this circulation of knowledge can prove highly beneficial for the website in question.

Whether you are an expert working for the website of advertising companies in Dubai or the designer of a petite business, continuous refinement of your skills is necessary for efficiency and fruitful outcomes.

Designing themes is a time-consuming task which requires a lot of prior learning and practice. Hopefully, the techniques suggested here will refine your skills and assist the efficiency of your work.

Junaid Ali Qureshi

is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform the competition and generate profitable leads.

His current ventures include Elephantation, eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and eCig.