I am in the process of learning xhtml/html5/PHP, and I have grasped the majority of the concepts of these languages. What I do not understand is if I have multiple pages in xhtml such as home(index)html, about.html, blog.html, etc., do I need to convert all of those pages to php files?
I’ve downloaded a few templates from the web to look at the php files, but in the template folder there is no individual files for the menu categories, just the usual .php files for created a wp theme. Why is this?
you need to convert all pages to php files if your site gonna be dynamic sites. Your header and footer may have same format, but not for your content. You may create those pages one by one, but it would have big effort to do that. Because you will need to code (paste) the header and footer to every pages. If you want to change something in your header or footer, you need to change it in every files there.
In PHP you just need to code once the header and footer in header.php and footer.php (respectively). And then call them by using include to make it displayed with your content. Taraaa. If you want to change some things on header / footer, just change it to header.php or footer.php. Taraaa. Yout header or footer has been changed immediately, you do not need to change every files.
Do I need to convert all of those pages to php files?The answer is, yes! but slice them first to be header, footer, sidebar, etc.
in the template folder there is no individual files for the menu categories, just the usual .php files for created a wp theme.Yes actually there is. Usually located in functions.php by using function register_nav_menus. I think you should start learning for WordPress theme from http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development. They have great resources there.
Yep, hope it helps. Good luck! 🙂