In this new article (Part 1) from Leon Kilat on the Cybercafe Experiments, he takes a look at how to use a popular web site development tool, Dreamweaver, to modify WordPress templates.
WordPress, like most PHP-MySQL CMS, use template files to control the appearance of websites. The webpage is assembled from several PHP files controlling specific aspects of the site like the header, sidebar, main content and footer.
To use Dreamweaver to edit or customize WordPress themes, you need to combine these different PHP files into one page so that you can immediately view, while editing the codes, how the page would appear.
He opts to go with a template named Zimpleza for simplicity's sake, and gets right into it. He steps through the process you'll need to prepare the environment, including pulling over the code and HTML from the current template files into Dreamweaver. Then, remove the PHP code and insert dummy content to get a better idea of how it will be laid out.
This is just a start - part two, focusing on creation (versus just modification) of a new WordPress theme.
