These days everyone and their mother seems to have a blog. A popular choice to run a blog is WordPress, it powers this blog and a few others that I run.
A good way to make your blog stand out from the crowd is with a custom theme. Developing themes for WordPress is pretty simple, if you know HTML/CSS and PHP, but nobody wants to start from scratch each time they develop a theme, these Starter Themes provide a simple canvas on which you can create your custom themes.
Released by Elliot Jay Stocks and recently upgraded for WordPress 2.6.2, Starkers provides a very basic starting point, no formatting what so ever.
Download Link
Unlike the other themes here, Starter is not intended to be used out of the box, rather provide a basic template to start developing your theme.
Download Link
It is designed to speed up the process of designing and coding a WordPress theme by eliminating the time spent on WordPress’ back-end PHP that is used in every theme.
Whiteboard is clean, noted, and compact (only 104 KB in size). It includes all the standard PHP tags and PHP files needed for a WordPress theme – plus a few extras.
The aim with Naked is that a developer with an XHTML template that they’ve already developed can very quickly apply it to this no-frills theme with the minimum of fuss and research.
Sandbox
The Sandbox is a powerful tool available for WordPress theme designers and developers. The Sandbox can be easily designed just with CSS, so beginners will feel comfortable not bothering with PHP.
Refueled : Blank WordPress Themes
Available in a number of configuration, 2 and 3 columns, with left and right sidebars.
Templates without design. HTML only if it is absolutly necessary for you. But full of comments to explain the functions.
an incredibly powerful, flexible theme that runs on our favorite blogging software. It’s free; it’s awesome; and it was built with your success in mind.
Blank Theme (Premium: single license $79.95)
This theme is ideal for those who want to highly customize the Essence layout, or simply want a clean, sharp look.
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Nice collection here. This is exactly what we did when starting up our site – took a relatively simple base, and then modded the heck out of it. 3 years later…it’s still an evolving work in progress. Thanks for these.
Good list. Might not have included the PlainTxt.org themes too. And they also listed a best in minimalist wordpress themes a few years back – http://www.plaintxt.org/2006/06/the-best-minimalist-wordpress-themes/
Pretty interesting selection, gonna check ‘em out
This post is useless without pics.
@dilivion: These themes are not supposed to be the final look of your site, they are “BLANK CANVASES” for your custom theme, what they look like is irrelevant.
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I’ve written a sandbox theme for which I’ve done some on-page SEO too. It’s at http://ianpurton.com/seo-wordpress-sandbox-theme/ and uses the Yahoo grids CSS framework to help with development.
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I agree with dilivion. Themes are a visual representation of one’s style. How are the themes laid out? 1/2/3/?-columns? Sidebar? What colors does each theme employ? The saying is too true:”A picture is worth a thousand words.”
@Richard: I think you’re missing the point, these aren’t final themes, they are blank.
They are mean’t to represent your style, they are for you to build the final look of your site, their look is irrelevant.
Very nice list! This great for beginners. I started learning by tweaking and still enjoy tweaking themes to fit my tastes.
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Don’t forget about Dylan:
http://dylan.philthompson.co.uk
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A clean slate in 6 variations (no, 1, 2 sidebars). Includes fixes for common IE6 (yes… 1/3 of traffic) CSS compliant issues.
http://www.themedreamer.com/bft
any update for WordPress 3.0?