My goal for the theme of this site was simple: simple. Finding that theme was difficult. I wanted it simple for the readers and simple for me, with an emphasis on text and readability. I found a wide variety of themes on the internet that had these characteristics, but a lot of them lacked the features you come to expect in a Wordpress theme in 2009. This is either because they were older, or some of them just seemed like “minimalist” meant throw up a spot for posts and be gone. So I’ve compiled this list of the best themes I found that are minimalist in nature but with good support for the backend as well.
The ultimate in 2009 Wordpress minimalism. One column of your posts down the middle. Widget at the footer to get that sidebar information in. Pages link on top. Theme options to change your font family and layout width.
A good theme to say a lot on. Very clean with a nice bit of colour. Instructions to customize included.
Nice layout, comes with very big font. “Content is king”.
A nice red header to stand out, excellent text, and three widgetized areas including a blurb at the top.
One Column theme with big font, small header, and two footer widgets.
Puts your posts front and centre. Editable links at the top and your sidebar information at the bottom. Comes with two colour schemes.
This one you’ll have to edit a small peice of code to put your twitter name and flickr name in, (or delete the sections), but that’s it. The rest of the sidebar is widgetized. Very clean theme.
Micro-blogging on Wordpress. Say what you want to say when you want to say it and that’s it. Lots of features. Not meant for a content-heavy site, more useful for chatting purposes.
A theme framework. Lots and lots and lots of widgetized areas. Very plain, but meant to be heavily customized. A good starting spot for a nice minimalist theme.
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Or what about the Sandbox theme?
Truly minimalist, it’s intended that people style it themselves, so its for people who want to tinker with code. It’s here: http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/
(I’ve just gone over to pick up the link, and realised that its related to the Simplr theme you mention above)
Yeah, you’re right. The Sandbox theme is excellent and is used as a framework for a lot of minimalist themes.
Several themes I have used before, and actually use on my MonoExpression site are by themes by Modula… http://www.modula.fi/category/downloads/
Two themes in particular called Modula Blue Giant and Modula White Drawf. The latter being the one i use on Monoexpression.com
Both worth keeping note of.
Graham
Graham
Some of those are very nice. I need to look into Expression Engine more.
I’m using Cleanr over at my blog http://leaderlifters.com and love it. I don’t plan on doing any advertising or monetizing, so it really is great that it features the content front and center. Nice list!!
If this post was an ordered list Cleanr would be very high towards the top. I wanted to use it for this blog, as a matter of fact, and almost did, but it didn’t quite fit my needs. I’d love to use it in the future though.
Thank you for this Matthew
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