If you are tired of always having to modify your theme through the Wordpress interface, we have a few suggestions for you. The most usual way to edit a theme’s files is to use the “edit theme” function in Wordpress’ presentation menu. After a while it becomes tiresome not be able to edit more than one file at once. It’s also oftentimes a clumsy way to edit files as the editor is very basic: no way to undo what you have typed, no way to revert to the previously saved version, no tabs, etc.

Say you want to edit the style.css to modify your appearance by creating new csss classes and at the same time the sidebar.php file to apply your new style. The clear solution is to use an external editor that allows you to edit these files online. There are many of those editors available, and until recently we were using TextMate and TextWrangler, which are very powerful editors while being easy-to-use for us beginners. Then we stumbled upon the demo version of Coda. Their tag line is “one-window web development” and it’s true: very easy to use, intuitive and beautiful interface, the software allows you to edit several pages at the same time, preview them in an integrated browser, undo stupid changes you have made, and organize your files on the server. It’s a very powerful little tool that brings powerful editing to website beginners and advanced users alike.

Related posts:

1. RapidWeaver and Wordpress compared | Part II: the out-of-the-box experience
2. Amateur webmaster tips: adding Wordpress tags to an old theme
3. Amateur webmaster tips: choosing and modifying your wordpress styles
4. RapidWeaver and Wordpress compared | Part I: the 5 minutes setup promise
5. Amateur webmaster tip: importing Wordpress posts in another Wordpress blog