There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I have a “blank” WordPress theme for myself, because I make a lot of WordPress themes. Starting from Kubrick, or any other pre-made theme, would be absurd. There is to much stuff there that would to be stripped out or fought against to be useful. So, I have my own. It’s been in a folder called BLANK-theme on my computer for a while, so I’m going to call it BLANK. And now I’m making it available for you. Read on to find out the scoop on it and you can decide if it would be of any use to you.

What is BLANK?

It is a WordPress theme with all the functionality of a typical WordPress theme but almost none of the styling. The idea is that when starting a new theme, it is far easier to use this as a base then a theme that is already finished and styled.

What are some of it’s “features”?

• Things are as semantically marked up as can be for a starter theme.
• It’s XHTML 1.0 STRICT and validates. Maybe it will go HTML5 soon. We’re at that point where there isn’t a whole ton of advantages to going to HTML5 yet, but there aren’t many downsides either and it’s definitely the future.
• The sidebar is widget-ready.
• Page titles are optimized for best SEO and readability/usability.
• Functions.php file does a number of things: Sets up RSS <link>’s in the head automatically, loads jQuery, removes the weird header links like rsd_link, wlw manifest, and generator info that I’ve never once needed, and registers the sidebar widget area.
• Has some starter CSS ready to go, more about that below.

Uses includes for some key things, like under-title meta data and forward/back navigation, that are very common places for redundant code in themes.

About the CSS

As you can see from the screenshot above, the CSS is pretty baron, but not entirely! Here are some things the CSS is set up for:

• Uses a basic star-selector reset.
• Includes a .group selector for the new clearfix
• Has basic toolbox and WordPress-standard CSS classes, including .screen-reader-text for hiding things.
• Standard typography-related sectors are there but generally without any attributes.
• CSS for threaded comments is in there, but light on actual styling.
• Both screen and print styles included in single stylesheet. Print styles optimized for generic nice printing.

Demo and Download

If you want to take a peak at it live, you can view it in our Theme Playground. You can also download it from there, or directly right here.