New Wordpress Theme - Skeleton For Building Your Own
Originally published on: 2/22/2006 5:21:11 AM
A while back I started an absolute minimum theme for Wordpress: a "skeleton" theme, if you will. I intended it to be used as the basis for building other themes without having to dig through so much CSS and HTML code. I got it about 80% of the way I wanted it and hadn't touched it. Last night I decided to take an hour or so and finish it.
It makes it relatively easy to take a static HTML design and convert it to a Wordpress theme. I optimized it (relatively) for search engine mojo and put one "float" in for the sidebar. Otherwise, it's about as basic as I think it can be made and still contain all of the bits you're likely to want in your own theme.
Download the Skeleton Wordpress theme
I'm looking to run it through it's paces by doing 2-3 conversions from templates at OSWD and Open Web Design. Any suggestions for which ones to convert? For one of them I'll document the process of taking a design from one of those sites and Skeleton and cranking out a new Wordpress theme. But, I'd rather choose one that is likely to be appealing to most people.
Comments
commented on 2/22/2006 WONDERFUL! i have always tried to take an existing theme and strip it down to something like this. My problem has always been that once i take out one piece i ruin the dependancy that it had on another piece of layout. i will be using this in my site's current redesign.
thanks so much for this!
commented on 2/23/2006 Great idea! This is what WordPress should come with standard. If you find the time, it would also be very handy to have a 3- and 4-column skeleton.
commented on 2/23/2006 This one's particularly nice:
http://www.openwebdesign.org/design/2628/Nautica01/#
Thanks for the skeleton theme. I'm excited to play with it.
commented on 3/3/2006 but it should at least be fully xhtml compliant.
nice idea though!
commented on 4/1/2006 Anyone who wants to make it XHTML compliant is welcome to send me the files and I'll post them.
commented on 4/13/2006 [...] I just torn my word press theme to shreads with the help of J Wynia’s Skeleton Theme. [...]
commented on 5/14/2006 okay gonna try this one.
commented on 5/24/2006 Yes, what an excellent idea!
One suggestion is to "id" the sidebar sections and headers. It adds more code, but I think it would make it more CSS flexible-along the lines of CSS Zen Garden.
BTW, I'll email you an XHTML compliant version.
commented on 1/4/2007 I took a moment to make the theme fully xhtml valid, I also converted it from xhtml 1.0 transitional to xhtml 1.0 strict. The result can be found on www.arnebrasseur.net.
The changes are minimal:
- Removed the outer pair in sidebar.php
- Put some pieces of loose text in tags
- Removed a few 'align="center"' attributes (for xhtml strict)
I am most gratefull for saving me a whole lotta time.
commented on 1/4/2007 Sorry, I posted the wrong link. You can edit the previous comment and delete this one.
commented on 2/22/2007 thanks! wish me luck! :D
commented on 4/13/2007 Hey thanks. Just what I was looking for.
commented on 8/19/2007 I wanted to use wordpress to create a sort of slideshow of my recent trip to Japan. Each page would have a picture and short explanation, or an excerpt from the journal I kept, or something like that. I decided to use a blog engine with a totally cleaned-up theme.... Then I started hating my life trying to modify existing themes and remove all the "blog" features.
Your skeleton is a lifesaver. Starting from nothing, I've just added CSS to come out exactly how I want. Perfect!
Thanks so much.
commented on 6/13/2007 I notice people still regularly download the file from my site. I would like to recommend the Sandbox theme. It's a very complete XHTML valid theme especially geared towards developers. It contains an awful lot of class and id tags so you can do whatever you like with CSS. It also supports 'skins' which is basically a means of choosing a CSS file from your WP admin screen. I use it on my blog and am very happy with it.
commented on 5/29/2007 Yup. saved me making one of my own. Thanks!
commented on 11/17/2008 i want to share my free wordpress theme here.
Preview:
http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/eVid/
Download:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6uv0n2
commented on 1/22/2010 Look at the link Arne provided in the comments for an updated/better version.
commented on 1/21/2010 downloading link gaves me an error.. :(
commented on 6/28/2010 Has anyone gotten the skeleton theme work on Bluehost?