The WordPress Theme Final Project
The WordPress Uh-Oh: How not to create a WordPress theme.
Project Date: Fall 2023
For this project, my goal was to create a WordPress theme that helped the user keep track of what books were read, future books to read, and user comments. I wanted to gain more experience in WordPress while also attempting to use the new skills I learned throughout this semester.
I chose to make a theme in the book category because, when attempting to create a website with a similar idea last semester, I struggled with finding a theme with all the aspects I wanted. I wanted other users to find a template that suited all bookkeeping and book-tracking needs. If someone also wanted to create a website that was reaching for GoodReads but better, they would have a starting point.
My project first started with research on the best way to create a WordPress theme. After looking through a few articles, I eventually settled on an article on DreamHost to help guide me throughout making my theme. The steps were easy to follow and I also had a YouTube video prepared to help me if I got stuck. However, I failed to plan for my user error.
When going to install WordPress into my website, I noticed my previous WordPress projects had updates that needed to be installed. Completely forgetting about how my professor last semester specifically suggested that we do not update *everything*, I swiftly updated all of the WordPress updates for last semester’s project three and final project. When I next went to install WordPress again to start working on my theme, I received this error.
With a lot of confusion and some quick googling, I found that I had run out of disk space on my public HTML disk. I then realized that updating all of my WordPress updates might have had something to do with running out of space when my site was working fine before. a
After screen recording and deleting projects in an attempt to try and get space back, I eventually realized I could still create my theme using one of the previous WordPress sites I had created before.
Overall, I was able to create a theme in WordPress, however, it was not to the standard I wanted it to be. WordPress, for me, is a large hurdle that I have yet to overcome and I feel like I still have a lot left to learn about how it works. My final project did not turn out the way I wanted, and that was mostly because I spent a lot of my time worrying about whether or not I had enough space to install WordPress. I was successful in creating a theme, but I do not think I was successful in using the new techniques I learned this semester. This is not my best work and I think I need to take more time to learn WordPress and also get more comfortable with javascript and Vue so I can use them more effectively in the future.
