Hi all! After a long-long time, i'm in business to make my design for myself. I'm using wordpress, and i just don't like default themes. The thing is: i understand css, can create tables, layers, etc etc, but i don't really have talent to make it look something good. I can render the site in the wanted/good way, but i am just too lazy to make every little detail look good, like letter types and borders. So i would like to ask: are there any (non wordpress specific) program (maybe free) which will help me to fasten these little "afterworks" up? Which programs should i chose (are there maybe good free ones)? Please do not say notepad or firefox with firebug, i'm already using them (to make the rough changes). I'm in need of a good WYSIWYG editor with built in tricks, which will save me a little time at the end, when i'm changing small details. Al, answers appreciated. Thanks.
Well, I'm not sure about WYSIWYG editors, I really don't like them myself. As far as pretty much any kind of design goes - Photoshop is brilliant. Making good looking websites is art, you can be the best coder in the world but if you use horrible colours and bad images than people still won't like your site. My advice would be to set up folders and text files with code snippets and generic images in. It'll take sometime at first but once it's done you can just copy and paste to save a lot of time. Hope that helps!
According to me if you will continue wordpress it is much better for long time. And if you don't want default theme the go to google >> search >> free wordpress themes and install which one you like. For changes rather than notepad we use Dreamweaver.
Thanks for advices! I think i'm going to try out dreamweaver, i heard a lot of that one. axHept: on default themes i meant free themes, coded by others. Well, the main thing is now i have a lot of inbuilt custom functions in my wordpress, so most themes won't do any good, i have to (and i want to) code it myself, so it will look like the way i want (and will be lightweight, because i will use hardcoded urls in the theme, and will use just the really needed php codes in it, to make it lighter)
DreamWeaver is a WYSIWYG editor (you can use code only function, too), but that is not needed if you can code by hand. Coding a WP theme with DreamWeaver? I guess that won't work very well. I would say you learn HTML/CSS first at w3schools.com since layouting a site is done with CSS. You could use a "text-only" framework for WordPress like the Carrington framework (I am using that one, too... then styling the theme with CSS). In that case you do not need to "code" your "stuff" by hand. If you are not familiar with php and the WP functions... you will have a hard time, believe me. Anyway, good luck lol
If you are coding for wordpress, using any wysiwyg editor is a bad idea. Get notepad++ for your coding, it is not a wysiwyg editor, but it will making coding a little easier. As for creating your own look, I wouldn't suggest trying to modify the default theme, you will have a much easier time starting off if you find a theme that is close to what you are looking for and then play with modifying it. That was my favorite way when starting at least.