Is good knowledge of PHP needed to make an installable template for CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal?
Or is good knowledge of XHTML and CSS enough?
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Is good knowledge of PHP needed to make an installable template for CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal?
Or is good knowledge of XHTML and CSS enough?
From my experience – I have a lot with WordPress, and some with Joomla – I would recommend at least some PHP knowledge and understanding of the underlying code base. For visual styling, HTML/CSS knowledge is enough as long as you work “around” the PHP, but you will be extremely limited when asked to change fundamental characteristics of the template, or implement new functions.
It depends on what you want to offer really. If you are content with offering stylistic customizations only, you may be fine with HTML, CSS and a bit of PHP. The basic PHP functions used in the templates are easy to understand.
But functional customizations, like implementing custom behaviour for certain posts, tags, categories, comments etc., require good knowledge in PHP. If you want to increase your market value, getting into the WordPress Codex and either Joomla or Drupal is certainly a good idea.
On a side note, I personally have come to dislike WordPress and its API due to lots of bloat and low code quality. I looked for a more minimalistic blogging platform recently (SO question here). The answer I accepted, Habari, is a marvellously flexible and, even though it has some rough edges here and there and the leading “0” in the version number sometimes shows, elegant platform. It takes some understanding of PHP 5 to get into its templating capabilities, but once you get your head around it, it is unbeatably flexible. It may not be for you, as I know you are targeting popular platforms to get work (which is perfectly fine.) but to have mentioned it.