Ever wanted to create your own WordPress theme but always found it too complicated? You may have PHP and CSS skills but don’t know much about the WordPress API, and theme system needed for you to create a feature-rich theme. Well Flow may just be what you’re looking for, plus it’s FREE!
Themify Flow is a drag & drop theme builder for WordPress. It’s built and designed to allow you to create a complete theme on both the frontend and the backend. Built with a simple drag & drop interface, Flow allows you to easily design your template parts (header, sidebar, footer) and templates for posts, pages, categories, and even custom post types. No PHP, CSS, or FTP needed to upload files. With all the technical stuff out of the way, Flow allows you to focus more on the look and feel of your WordPress theme.
Designing your WordPress Site
You can easily style every element on your site using the Flow Styling panel. No CSS coding needed. When activated, this panel appears on the right side of your site allowing you to toggle various styling options while showing you a live preview of the design. The panel comes with styling options such as Google fonts, color picker, image upload, and much more.
In addition to styling various elements on your site, you can now combine the use of Flow and the Themify Builder plugin. Use Flow to design your entire WordPress site from head to toe (see related post). Using Flow to design the theme (header, sidebar, footer, and templates for posts, pages, categories, etc.), and the Builder plugin to design responsive content layouts.
Limitless Templates
Create as many custom templates as you want with the drag & drop Builder. With Flow, each template can be assigned to any page, post, category, tag, and blog. You can even select templates to custom post types & taxonomies by third party plugins such as WooCommerce. Regardless of the main template layout, each template can have its own version of the header, sidebar, and footer. Now with the Flow Template Options (see related post) meta box, you can choose any template and template part (header, footer, and sidebar) per post/page.
Plugin Compatibility
Flow also works with all major plugins such as: WooCommerce, BBpress, Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, Yoast SEO, Easy Digital Downloads, and more. In addition to this, is its compatibility with the Post Type Builder plugin. This plugin allows you to create complex custom post types that’s tailored to your needs, allowing you to customize your site anyway you want (see related post).
Some Technical Facts
- Flow is 100% responsive, with an option to display fixed width design.
- Flow is built with a modular coding system, and resource files are loaded only when necessary. The template queries and generated CSS are cached for fast performance.
- Coded with HTML5 and schema.org markup, Flow is SEO friendly. You can even pick what HTML tag to output for site logo, title, etc.
- Themes created with Flow are 100% mobile-friendly, passing Google’s mobile-friendly test. This can help your site to rank better on Google mobile search (you can read the related article here).
- Flow is powerful, but lightweight in file size. The current framework/theme zip (themifyflow.zip) is less than 1.1mb.
- Flow utilizes the WordPress API and custom post types to ensure compatibility between WordPress and other plugins.
- Flow theme system (templates, template parts, template assignment, and modules) is inspired by WordPress. The drag & drop interface was adopted from Themify Builder.
