Do you want to build your own wordpress theme but don’t want to start from the basic html template. Then check out some of these popular wordpress starter themes.
WordPress starter themes are fully functional but they just don’t have any attractive design. They are actually built to help you speed up your designing and development process. And trust me there are many advantages of using them. They give you freedom from testing and debugging your base framework. They are used by thousands of developer around the world and so you can use them with confidence. Most of them are regularly updated with help of community support and most of them are open source. Furthermore you can use them for any of your projects without any limitations. And the best, they are extremely easy to customize.
When I first started developing my blog’s theme I was completely meshed up with the custom functions and filters used by wordpress. I wasn’t able to understand the exact way it’s template hierarchy work. But then I found zurb foundation wordpress starter theme and then within a week I was able to design my first template.
So from my personal experience I can say, start using starter theme from today iteself if you are new to wordpress. It will save your months if not years in understanding wordpress codex.
Contents
Zurb Foundation WordPress Starter Theme
Zurb foundation is a world known framework for developing responsive designs. You can use it to create outstanding applications and products. Currently it’s been used by many famous and international organizations like Mozilla, national Geographic and many others.
It’s latest version introduces a concept of interchange which gives you the power to display different content sections in different devices.
But zurb is an html framework and so they introduced foundation press which is a blank theme for wordpress. It has all the features of its parent framework but it doesn’t include any features like short codes, layouts, sliders or menus. Foundation press is actually more like a starting point from where you journey to developing an outstanding websites will be easier and smoother.
Visit Official Page
Roots
Roots was released back in march 2011. Since then it has gain lot’s of worldwide attention and today it’s managed by a group of 70 peoples. It comes with HTML5, twitter bootstrap, grunt and boilerplate so that you could choose your favorite framework for development.
Roots has been developed with grunt and bower and thus it automatically helps to compile your LESS. It can even automatically minify the style sheets and java script files.
It even support 4 different plugins which is basically extra elements which helps to extend the features of this base template.
Roots has got a template wrapper which manages different sections of theme in one single file. This helps you to easily edit the design without searching for required file.
Check Official Docs
Underscore
Underscore is a responsive wordpress starter theme developed by developers at Automattic. This means it’s an official base template developed by the creator of wordpress to help beginners to get into theme development.
Just like others this theme is not meant to be used as parent. You need to modify it, code it so as to design it the way you want it to look.
It has got everything which is required to build a beautiful and modern website. It comes with inbuilt responsive navigation, lots of custom php files which you can customize to give your website a unique look. Furthermore its regularly updated and has been used to build thousands of websites.
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Reverie
It’s a framework which has been developed on zurb foundation. It has extremely versatile HTML5 components and has got many additional features like menus, captions and support for pagination. It also uses CSS preprocessor so as to keep your files in a clean and organized manner.
It has been crafted considering the best SEO practices but it still recommends you to use some external plugins to optimize your website. It has also been coded to work properly with different devices.
Unlike other you can use reverie as a parent theme and can develop your own child themes. Or you can use it as your final product.
Visit Official Page
Themble Bones
If you want to develop a website which could comply with latest web standards then you can consider using bones. It has all features which you will ever need to develop any wordpress theme. You can either keep all the features, add more additional custom settings or can remove it.
Bones utilizes mobile first approach which allows you to develop website design which will looks perfect on mobile screens and other devices.
Furthermore bones comes with very detailed documentation and allows you to easily add post formats, custom widgets, custom dashboard options and many more. Bones uses sass which allows you to speed up your design work without losing your control on elements.
Visit Official Page
If you feel that I am missing any wordpress starter theme then I will request you to list it in comment section.
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