How to Create a WordPress Responsive Theme Based on Bootstrap in Easy Steps
Given so numerous quantity of devices with a variety of options, screen dimensions, and operation systems, responsive web pages and apps are now practically obligatory for a company’s online existence.
More than half of all the traffic is received from mobile gadgets, and this indicator is increasing. Developers, marketing specialists, and web designers realize the enormous potential in case your digital platform is responsive and its view and navigation can be easily seen on each type of device.
Responsive bootstrap wordpress theme is a step towards web designing where all the components of the webpage adapt according to the dimensions for being more useful and comfortable in reading, loading time, and being user-friendly as well.
What is WordPress?
It’s an unpaid webpage tool that helps you to create sites without any special education or awareness of HTML creation. It seems to be the most prospective platform these days and is supported by a strong alliance of open-source web developers. Endless quantities of options can be accessed on WordPress, so completely everything can be done here. The sense of its being so popular is costless, plugins and open-source, so anybody can check how it is working and use its opportunities freely.
What Is Bootstrap?
It is a free and open platform for making webpages and web apps. As the online network is undergoing changes more and more each day, moving to responsive design, it appears more complicated for web developers to stay up-to-date using all the current trends. Bootstrap for WordPress is able to turn all things much easier – it will let you create webpages without the necessity to add “adaptability”. Below we will describe an easy guide to creating wordpress themes with bootstrap.
- Installation
The initial thing to start with is an installation of Bootstrap and WordPress. Then Bootstrap has to be unpacked. Then follow wp-content folder > themes. Here you have to add a new folder, it should be named BootSTheme. Move here all the info from unpacked Bootstrap. Practically any WordPress installation will consist of the particular files. The further step is to add 4 clear docs with the appropriate names as written earlier in the newly prepared BootSTheme folder.
- Configuration
Then choose style.css, and insert a code.
Here are notes that give basic characterizations and specifics about the topic. It’s strongly recommended to adjust these notes to describe the characteristics of your theme.
- Copy the code
For this guide, we won’t apply all the available CSS and JS files available. To begin the dev operation, use the code into the file bootstrap.min.css and insert in the style.css file.
- Establishing HTML Template
For our further work, an essential HTML template will be required. To make it more simple, you can load it and proceed with the guide.
WordPress has inbuilt options get_header() and get_footer() that on a default will call the according files.
The next is to copy the essential code and insert it into the Header and Footer, as shown in the images below.
Header
Footer
But if you transfer your and switch it on, you will see nothing as the Index file is still empty. You have to use the inbuilt option to call them, so insert this code to the Index.php
Now all the necessary components will appear on the webpage. However, we’ll yet receive an ordinary site having no kind of design or styling.
- Establish Footer and Header
We will transfer the Bootstrap style features using get_stylesheet_uri(). Then transfer style.css to the home web page, and a menu bar will appear now.
Another option is to copy this code in the header.php.
But even now, JavaScript properties on our site still won’t be available. What you have to do is to move js files directly to the footer and insert this code.
- Show the Particular Posts
Then, will call articles to the home web page and show them at the page top. This code has to be written in Index.php.
- List
Nex,t we will need all the sections to be listed on the left side of our home web page. Let’s make some examples of a styled div and the wp_list_categories(). Insert code to index.php, this will allow the sections to be placed by name.
- Show The Recent Articles And Authors
In the end, we will show the recent blog articles on our home web page. We will begin with the other “div” tag, and below this one, we’ll need the same one when loop technology as we had in the recommended post, but won’t restrict it with the “query_posts()” function
WordPress operates the_author(); and extracts the name of the article’s author. It can be applied to We can use it to progressively show the author’s name with every article.
Finally, it’s time for the last steps, and now we will review how to apply Bootstrap to our recently created theme to have it more user-friendly. We have two options to proceed with it.
- use CDN (Content Delivery Network)
You can implement Bootstrap options easily, just add its CDN to the php file “Header”. However, this way can lead to interoperability problems, so before doing it, check that your backup is successfully saved, and after getting sure that everything is okay, the code can be added.
- add Bootstrap using functions.php
To be able to proceed in such a way you have to install the Bootstrap internal library. Move the CSS files: Bootstrap.min and Bootstrap-theme.min th the Theme CSS and Bootstrap.js has to be moved to the “js” folder of the wordpress bootstrap theme.
Then open the php file Functions put in the queue these options, and insert the code to the file.
Save it and transfer it to the server.