Learn to Build Custom WordPress Themes with the Underscores (_S) Starter Theme and Lynda.com

After three months of planning, two weeks of recording, and the required editing, beta testing, and fine tuning, the 2016 reboot of my course WordPress: Building Themes From Scratch Using Underscores is available on Lynda.com.

If you are building a custom website using WordPress, or want to level up your developer skills, this is the course to watch.

Over the years, one of the most common questions I get from people who want to build websites with WordPress is "How do I build a custom WordPress theme?" In an ecosystem comprising many competing standards, recommendations, and starter themes and frameworks, it can be hard for those new to the technology to find the "right" answer. In my work, I have tested most starter themes and frameworks, and found what I believe to be the absolute best and most up-to-date foundation to build WordPress themes from: The Underscores (_S) starter theme.

To show both why _S is the best place to start, and provide a guide to building custom themes from scratch using _S, I spent the spring of 2014 putting together a new course for Lynda.com called "WordPress: Building Themes From Scratch Using Underscores". Since it's release in June 2014, this 6.5 hour comprehensive introduction to theme development has been viewed by over 22,000 individual subscribers, and the theme viewers learned to build in the course, called Simone, is ranked one of the top 100 most downloaded in the WordPress Theme Directory.

For the 2016 reboot, I rebuilt the entire course from scratch. Based on submitted feedback from and conversations with viewers, I formatted the new course to focus more on core philosophies, principles, and practices, and provide ample room for growth and exploration from the viewer. 

New Project, New Content, New Course

The new course features an all-new project, the theme called "Popper", and several new sections including a more comprehensive breakdown of the WordPress template hierarchy and _S' element container structure, building fully accessible and thumb-friendly navigation, and an entire chapter on how to add new features to the Customizer for color schemes and layout switching.

Watching this course, you will be fully equipped to build accessible, mobile-first, content-centric, custom WordPress themes from scratch using the _S starter theme, and with those skills, you can build amazing things for the web with WordPress. 

The original Underscores course is one of my proudest achievements, and I built the new version to give you, the viewer, more to learn and an easy way to level up  your theme development skills. Whether you're new to WordPress theme development or you watched the original course and want to learn more, the new course has something to offer, so get crackin' with the new WordPress: Building Themes From Scratch Using Underscores!

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Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a Front End Web Development Teacher, Speaker, Workshop Trainer and Author specializing in web standards and WordPress. He's a full time Senior Staff Author at Lynda.com with more than 60 courses in the library. You can watch all his courses at Lynda.com/mor10, find him on just about any social media network @mor10, and read his personal musings on his blog at mor10.com.