Well, okay, part of them.  According to this article from WordPress the php and html in your themes are GPL because WordPress itself is under the GPL.  However, the css files and any images in your theme do not technically need to be licensed under the GPL.  Talk about a monkey wrench!

What that means is technically you could pull off a case where you can hold all the rights to your css and image files to control the php and html.  Now, I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination (and the only area I know something about is music copyright law), but that seems to be really tricky.

As an aside, this is really only a problem for premium themes and plugins.  Because the php and html are derivative works of WordPress, you must follow the GPL.  That does not mean that you cannot charge for your time, effort, and distribution of the themes or plugins.  But you have to allow for the provisions of the GPL; namely, your code must be available, and anyone else can modify and/or distribute the code without permission.

Ah, the new world of copyright and license.  For me, I’ve spent a good amount of time coding, tweaking, and testing my WordPress Creations.  And while I do agree that open is better, I would like the option to get something back for my effort.

Do you all have any thoughts?  Any arguments for or against?

Edit: Well, it seems the crux of the argument is what constitues a derivative work of WordPress.  This article details the problem.  Thanks to Andrei from Softblog for the link.

There will be some items to download for your own use.  Not all of them will be free, but some will.  I’ve spent a lot of time on these, and I hope you might find them useful.  If you like what you see and want something custom done or a tweak to something up there, let me know on the page.

Anything you guys would like to see for WordPress?  I’m always looking for ideas.

Found this via John Saddington today.  It’s good enough that I wanted to post this for any of my readers who design Wordpress themes.

This article contains some Wordpress cheat sheets for all of your theme development and design needs.  I’ve already downloaded most of them, and will be referencing them often.

So, click through and enjoy, and let us know if you found them useful.

As a new theme builder myself, I had to ask around on what I needed to know to build a Wordpress theme.  So, I made a short list.  Here are the basic things you need to build yourself a Wordpress theme.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are awesome.  They make your whole site look great (and uniform), and can even quickly make another site or project blend in.  (for example, ChurchCrunch and its forums)

You need to get familiar with this code because it will style everything on your site.  Setting up columns, the width of your page, what color your text is, the background, it’s all done here.

CSS is probably the easiest way to start with themes.  I used a stock theme and tweaked the .css file until I got something of what I wanted.  Once you get the hang of that, you’ll be ready for more.

HTML

Knowing HTML (or now, XHTML) is also a must.  You need to know what all of those tags do, how to code in an image, and what all that means.

After you learn some HTML, you can customize the look and layout even more.  Adding extra <div> tags to make new sections that you want to style separately makes the blog more unique.  And setting up a comments class to style your comment section.

PHP

Ok, php is where the rubber meets the road.  PHP is what Wordpress lives in.  It’s a dynamic language that makes HTML files for your browser to read on the fly.

When you learn PHP and the Wordpress functions and template tags, you can pretty much do anything you want to do inside your blog.  Change up the front page layout, add a search bar outside of the sidebar, set up different templates for different categories, and much more.

Other Themes

Ok, my secret to coding is this: look at other people’s code.  I grabbed some free themes and looked at how the author coded.  How he did this to generate that effect.  How she got that look for her text.  A book helps, but when you see it, change it, and learn how to tweak yourself, I think you learn faster.

I haven’t learned everything yet, not by a long shot.  If you have a tip or idea, leave a comment so we all can learn.

Joshua Wagner Online

I’ve called the theme SlateBlue (for obvious reasons).  I’m considering releasing the theme in some form, but I’m not sure yet.  Any suggestions are welcome as well.

Enjoy!

[Image by NeitherFanboy]