I’ve been developing sites with wordpress for quite a while now. The first theme was just restyling the default Kubrick theme but now I tend to start from my own base and build from there. But when I think about it, it is the same as Kubrick but without the extra code in the function file and with a reset+blank css.
I am not saying it is a bad start, and I am sure most of the people developing for wordpress are doing it this way but Kubrick is not a good theme anymore. It uses some deprecated function and doesn’t make the most of the recent improvement (like threaded comments).
So, I’ve been searching around for good theme framework that would be 2.7 friendly and here is a round up of what I found. Please note that I haven’t tested them extensively yet.
Whiteboard
Whiteboard is the closest of the lot to my own framework. The code looks very much like Kubrick and the default css is just a standard reset (Meyer’s style) on one line. The author also added some nice features like Social links at the bottom of posts, pagination and categories/archive page template.
This theme is good is you know what you are doing. The default output is the bare minimum so don’t expect to get your theme up in 2 minutes plus you will need to validate the social bookmarking links as the & are not encoded.
Sandbox
I think this one is quite famous among wordpress themes developers. Sandbox’s goal is to provide an easy way to customise themes with valid semantic markup. The code has been written from scratch here but they’ve kept it fairly basic. Different stylesheets are provided to change the layout from a 2 columns left fuild to 3 columns or 2 right fixed, etc… Again with this one you need to know your css because the default style is, hum, minimalist? One thing I don’t like about it the class names it appends to some element like the body tag or posts divs. It is meant to be semantic but I’m not sure why yet…and it adds unnecessary code. I am always keeping mine as simple as possible.
Hybrid
From now we start talking about serious programming stuff. It’s not like working with a proper PHP framework yet but it’ certainly not like messing around with Kubrick.
Hybrid has also been written with semantic in mind but this time all the php classes are grouped into a library folder. The default wordpress files are just there for compatibility and call others stuff from the library. The css offer a wider range of pre-layout and the default style is much more pleasing than Sandbox or Whiteboard. But it also append huge list of class names to the body and other elements.
This one also provides more widgetized areas in different places.
Carrington
Following in the more advanced framework, Carrington comes in different styling options. I’ve tested both “blog” and “JAM” (just add markup). The first one gives you a fairly nice and clean style out of the box. The second is more of a blank canvas with debugging output and other helpfull stuff. Like Hybrid, all the real files used are grouped in different folders so it takes some time to find what you are looking for. It also comes with different stylesheets for a easy layout jump start.
Thematic
Thematic is the only one I had a chance to really work with so far. It is also the most advanced of the lot. I started on this one before looking at the others but I would have certainly not chose it for the job if I knew about the other options. I needed to do a very basic wordpress styling for a client blog and the Thematic was the wrong tool, I see it now.
This framework is for advance CMS development using wordpress, this is not for simple blog theme development. It features even more widget-ready areas (13!), dropdown menu, loads of different CSS templates to choose from and SEO friendly stuff.
There are so many files in this theme that I really got confused at some point. I guess with some practice it can be a powerful tool, but I wonder if this not a bit “overkill” to build wordpress sites.
Last words
Frameworks are good when you take the time to know them. Like Javascript framework you need to learn how to use them before really deciding if they are good or not. So don’t bother about my little concerns and try them. I will do the same in my future project and I will share more on those when I have a better insight.
I’d be very interested in your opinions or experiences in wordpress framework so please comment if you have anything to say on this topic.
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Thanks for sharing this. They are really useful for design first WP themes.
Out of these frameworks I have only tried Sandbox. I prefer to start with no style at all. So I started using one called Starkers. It’s a completely stripped down theme.
I would love it if you could take a look at the ones that I’ve put together at http://www.framework-templates.com. I created these because I couldn’t find any basic templates. The ones you’ve listed are great resource and I’ll have to check them out more carefully.
@Christine I’ve downloaded the Basic one and I have to say I really like it. Very simple styling and good code, you’ve done a great job here.
I think we should use theme frameworks as a parent theme for our child themes. We can learn a lot about child themes from Justin Tadlock (Hybrid) and Ian Stewart (Thematic).
I also have an upcoming article on harnessing the power of child themes.
Thank you for this list.
I agree, child themes are very interesting, but you need to know the framework quite well to use them at their full potential. I’ll definitely try them in my next project using Hybrid.
Thought I would add my own newly created Theme framework (of sorts) to the mix:
BlogStarter Theme
It is just a very simplified, emptied out theme to be used by developers to create new themes quickly and easily with a very small learning curve.
@christine – similar to your stuff. I’m going to take a closer look and give them all a try. They look interesting.
I would love any feedback on ways to make it better.
-Marty