Brett Bumeter of Softduit Media introduces the WordPress Theme design to new designers at WordCamp Birmingham 2009, slides set up topic for actual demonstration (no-slides) afterwards

1. Design Your First WordPress Theme IN MINUTES! @brettbumBrett Bumeter, llm Softduit Media Softduit.com 1

2. Who am I? I'm a former corporate whistleblower, turned professional philosopher (blogger). I provide business development and CMS web design & configuration services. Softduit.com 2

3. I work from a WiFi Fishing dock on Lake Wylie near Charlotte, NC Softduit.com 3

4. What Can I help You Do? Softduit.com 4

5. A year ago, I couldn't design a wordpress theme to save my life. Softduit.com 5

6. I could download a free theme, and hack it to do all sorts of things, but I was always trapped in someone else's box. Softduit.com 6

7. They Shared a couple common Issues They weren't functional enough, bad for SEO They rarely had valid html, xhtml or css No menu capability (so no CMS) They weren't MINE! Plus they were kind of ugly and tended to be used repetively when I found a theme that worked Softduit.com 7

8. Fast Forward 1 year, I've designed hundreds of themes, for myself, for friends and family and professionally for my clients! $$$ AND . . . Softduit.com 8

9. I can teach you how to design themes, in minutes, Softduit.com 9 EVEN IF you are not a graphic designer & don't know the difference between PHP and PCP! In fact we're going to walk some volunteers through the process now. I'm going to guide them, and they are going to take a stab at it on their own computers.

10. What do you need to design a theme? Theme Design Software In the past, this meant you needed to buy some expensive (very expensive) product(s) from Adobe Then, You took your expensive software and found or paid for hours and hours of training or education with that software. Finally, the people that survived that would need to consider whether they wanted to pay or spend the time with more advanced education or training in graphic design or maybe take a few classes in programming with PHP connected to MySQL You Don't have to make that investment anymore Softduit.com 10

11. Now, there's this great software program, that takes the learning curve almost completely out of theme design (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, even Blogger!) Softduit.com 11 No More Learning Curve Accidents

12. Its called Artisteer and yes there is a free trial! Artisteer.com You can take it for a spin yourself, here while you are at WordCamp or in the privacy of your own dock office Softduit.com 12

13. In fact, I'm even running a theme design contest for beginners between now and the week after Blogworld in October. Details: the License to Design Theme Contest http://bit.ly/Lic2DsgnContest Softduit.com 13 License to Design Theme Contest

14. All you need is a PC or a Mac computer and a pulse & that's about it So let’s make some themes Softduit.com 14