DEVTRENCH Blank Theme for Wordpress
Sometimes when starting out a new Wordpress theme it's nice to have something to start from that's pretty bare, but has enough code so that you don't feel like you're reinventing the wheel. I know there's lots of blank themes out there, but I created my own and this is what I usually start from. It's basically the default theme, stripped down with reset and typography CSS from blueprint. This theme has very little - almost none - html markup, but includes the common php tags wordpress uses to display content. This makes it ideal to start from because you just have to surround the php tags with your XHTML code.
[download id="13" format="1"]
If you use this theme here are a few steps to get your started and is basically the process I go through. Before creating the Wordpress theme I'm assuming you have XHTML/CSS sources to work from.
- Copy your existing CSS into style.css
- Copy your images into the images folder. To make everything work right, I recommend using the same file structure as a wordpress theme with your CSS and image folder in the same directory.
- Copy the html head and banner protion of your design into the header.php file. The banner portion of your design is anything that is the same across all parts of your site. Typically this is logo, menu, search bar, etc.
- Copy the footer portion of your design into footer.html. Like the banner, the footer is anything at the bottom of your design that is the same across all pages.
- Next, start the homepage design. You can use the index.php file or copy index.php to a home.php file. Copy the necessary code from your design template into the wordpress template, surrounding the php tags with your code where necessary.
- Then do the inside or single page template by modifying the single.php page. Similar to the homepage you'll take your inside page template code and surround the php code in single.php with it.