Adding Your Theme

Now that we have included the core WP files, the next step is to add our theme. Since we have all the necessary functions to do so, this is really easy. Simply add the following lines after the code we just modified in our index.php.

// includes the theme header
include(TEMPLATEPATH.'/header.php');

// includes the theme footer
include(TEMPLATEPATH.'/footer.php');

Obviously, header.php and footer.php have to exist in your theme in order for this to work, but most (if not all), WordPress themes have at least these two files. If you decide to change your theme in the future, the theme will change on these hijacked pages as well. Cool, huh?

Now you can code away and insert as much php goodness between the header and footer includes as you like. But what if you want to have friendly URLs like WordPress has?

Modifying .htaccess for Friendly URLS

Having Friendly URLs in the subdirectory of WordPress can be tricky since the rewrite rules affect files that are in your subdirectory. You have to add another rewrite rule in .htaccess above the one for WordPress that will filter out our directory first. It's added above because rewrite rules are executed in the order the come (and the [L] option tells apache that rule is the last one to be processed). Add this code above The main rewrite for WordPress:

Replace 'tool' with the name of your directory. The entire thing should look something like this:

This will allow you to have urls like /tool/screw-driver. Any url that does not actually exist as a file or directory will be passed through your index.php file. You'll need to write code there to parse the url appropriately.

On the next page you'll find out how to make custom includes...