What goes into creating a CMS theme

[FPForum]

I'm not the hottest designer on the street or anything but I do know html, css, some php..etc. I am considering writing up some of my own joomla, wordpress, and xoops templates for people to download. However, I'm a little curious what all goes into this? what software would one use?

I'm looking to make some free templates downloadable by other people..Could anyone point me to some tutorials? I'm guessing maybe Dreamweaver and doing some CSS edits...but there has to be more to it than just that. Anyone care to shed some light?

 

[bensd]

I would find a simple template from each of the cms's and work from there - you can then work around a complete structure.

-Ben

 

[MJ]

Regions, blocks, headers, stylesheets, scripts, hooks, variables...

Alot of stuff goes into theming, but it honestly depends on what CMS you are theming. Here are some beginner guides for your reference:

How to Theme Drupal
How to Theme Wordpress

These are pretty thurough and reading through these should give you more of an understanding. There is some great money to be made by making themes if you know the right people.