The fun thing with WordPress is that there’s always something new that you can sometimes help to look at examples of what others have been able to do with WordPress. These 10 tutorials and 10 Sources will teach basic WordPress theming as well as some more advanced skills.

10 Sources for Developing WordPress Themes Inspiration

1. LoopPress

LoopPress is a showcase of beautiful WordPress websites, blogs and themes. Decent archives, but not updated very frequently.

2. We Love WP

The best, most up-to-date gallery for WordPress sites and blogs. We Love WP has been around for over a year and they have a ton of designs for your inspiration (in June they passed 1,000). And of course, you can also subscribe to their feed.

3. WPCandy Gallery

WPCandy is a popular blog about WordPress that includes a gallery of excellent WordPress-powered sites.

4. Unmatched Style WordPress Tag

Unmatched Style is one of my favorite galleries, and fortunately they include a tag for WordPress sites so you can easily separate them from the rest of the gallery.

5. CSS Glance | WordPress Category

With over 300 designs in the WordPress category, CSS Glance is certainly an excellent place for inspiration. Also, CSS Glance is up-to-date and regularly adding new designs.

6. WPcube

WPcube is another WordPress-specific gallery. It hasn’t been updated in few weeks, but hopefully more will be coming, because the site already has a nice archive.

7. CSS Bloom | WordPress Category

CSS Bloom is another gallery that distinguishes WordPress sites/blogs. With well over 100 designs in the WordPress category, CSS Bloom is worth a look

8. Best CSS Gallery | WordPress Tag

Best CSS Gallery is a fairly small gallery in comparison to some of the most popular ones, but they do have a tag for WordPress sites.

9. Excellent Blog Designs from Smashing Magazine

I’m sure you’re familiar with Smashing Magazine’s inspiration posts. They have several that showcase excellent blogs, and one of them separates the blogs on display according to their platform. This list Includes almost 30 that are powered by WordPress.

10. I Heart Blogs

I Heart Blogs is a pretty cool site with a lot of potential. Too bad it hasn’t been updated in several months. It’s a gallery especially for blogs (variety of platforms). Even though it hasn’t been updated recently, the archives can still provide some inspiration.

10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes Inspiration

1. Designing for WordPress

Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks has a three-part video series for downloading and installing WordPress, all the way through everything else involved with designing a custom theme. The example theme that is built through the series is a personalized homepage theme.

2. How to Create a WordPress Template or Theme

This tutorial from Aneko Studios was one of the first ones I read on WordPress theme development. It covers the different files that make up the WordPress theme and the basic coding that is involved with each.

3. Developing a WordPress Theme

Deziner Folio did a tutorial that covers the basics of the header, sidebar, footer and index files. This one is not as in-depth as some of the others on this list, but it is a good place to get a quicker understanding of theme development.

4. How to Make a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme

While there are plenty of good tutorials for designing and coding themes, there are very few that touch on the process of creating a control panel. This one from Cats Who Code takes you through the process, as used in the Mimbo theme.

5. How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch

NETTUTS has a two-part series (see parts 1 and 2) that’s a good resource for new theme developers. It cover the basic files of the theme, including CSS, and the tutorial walks through the development of a basic sample theme.

6. So You Want to Create WordPress Themes Huh?

Small Potato wrote a detail 16-part series on all aspects of theme development. Most of the individual sections of the theme are not that long, so 16 parts isn’t as intimidating or time-consuming as it may seem.

7. How to Create WordPress Themes from Scratch

Kai Loon wrote this popular series (see parts 1, 2, 3a, and 3b). It’s very detailed and covers designing the theme in Photoshop, slicing and coding, and all of the files involved in the theme. If your looking for a great guide to take you through the etire process of desigining and coding, this is a good place to start.

8. Build a Newspaper Theme with WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework

For a non-traditional or magazine-style layout, this tutorial will take you through the specific WordPress coding that’s involved and you’ll create a simple, but attractive, sample layout.

9. Build a Basic Newspaper Layout with WordPress and jQuery

This is another excellent tutorial from NETTUTS for building a different newspaper layout. Of course, it covers all the coding of the various WP files involved.

10. Dissection of a WordPress Theme

An older tutorial, but still relevant, this is an in-depth series from Urban Giraffe (See parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) that will take you through the entire process of developing a WordPress theme, with plenty of explanation to go along with the code samples.