Recommended Tools for Theme Development

Essential tools and resources for making CSS and template customizations in JReviews.

If you are going to be making CSS and template changes, of course you need to have a basic understanding of CSS, HTML and perhaps a bit of PHP.

Some of these things you can pick up pretty quickly just by looking at some of the examples and the existing files.

There are great tools to make the job easier.

#Code Editor

Visual Studio Code - A free, powerful code editor with excellent support for PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

#FTP Client

Filezilla - A reliable, free FTP client for uploading your theme customizations to your server.

#Browser Developer Tools

Google Chrome is recommended for theme development:

• Learn about Chrome's Developer Tools
• Get Started With Viewing And Changing CSS
• Install a Chrome extension like Live Editor for CSS so you can test your class overrides directly in the browser

#File Comparison Tools

For comparing files when updating customized themes:

• WinMerge (open source)
• Beyond Compare (commercial)
• CompareMerge (commercial)
• Kaleidoscope (commercial)