After you’ve been making Wordpress themes for a while, you come to the realization that there are certain things you have to do every time you start a new theme. Whether it’s making all the files yourself, or stripping down a theme you’re about to edit, there are non-fun things you have to do before you can design and code a theme to your liking.
Blank Wordpress frameworks are here to help you skip that part. Blank frameworks are here to speed up your Wordpress theme development and get you right to the fun part designing and adding functionality you’re proud of. Here are some of the bigger, most used, and most useful frameworks:
Note: These frameworks are most useful when you already have an understanding of Wordpress themes, so if you’re just starting out check out Want to Create Wordpress Themes? to help get you started.
Starkers
Starkers by Elliot Jay Stocks
Starkers by Elliot Jay Stocks is arguably the best one of these blank frameworks. He’s taken a lot of time and a lot of care ensuring a compliant and efficient launch pad for your theme development. Valid up to v8.5, it’s definitely worth a look.
Features:
All non-semantic, presentational class names removed
All non-semantic, presentational HTML elements removed
All unnecessary elements have been removed
Whiteboard
Whiteboard Theme Framework
Whiteboard is another framework filled with lots of files and templates to start out with, but no real design to strip down.
Features:
15 files included
Categories Page Template
Archives Page Template
Pagination Posts
Socialization Links
A list of included divs
WP Candy Starter Theme
The Starter Theme Project by WPCandy
The WP Candy Starter Theme Project is another great framework, created by WP Candy. Tired of doing the same things over and over every time a new theme was being made, the Starter Theme was born.
Features:
Blank style.css with theme name, author, URL, etc. tags at the top
Content-ready 404, archive, search, index, single post, and page files
Full, working comments.php file
Complete header.php set up with links to RSS, a stylesheet, and JS file;
Default search form template
Blank screenshot.png file and images folder
More Blank Frameworks:
Here are some more blank frameworks. Some of them have a little bit more design in them, so watch out if you want a completely naked theme.
The Sandbox
WP Framework
Carrington Jam
Basic
