You seem very busy - i’ve had about 7 twitter txts from you today already!

I was actually thinking of doing this myself today and have been looking at the default wordpress theme trying to work out how I’m going to strip it down.

I think your blog post just came at the right time and it will save me alot of time so I’ve downloaded your clean slate theme!

Cheers

Sean

@ Jina: Thanks - I hadn’t heard of Sandbox (looking into it now). And no, don’t worry, I didn’t remove any microformats (not that there are many in the default theme anyway). :)

I think the default needs a bit of updating. Just a tiny bit, since WordPress is ahead of other (crappy) CMSs out there.

I do agree that Sandbox looks nice, but say if you want control over where your dates, categories, etc. go, you’d have to edit the theme anyway. I love Sandbox, but if you’re going to release a theme that’s supposed to please many other people, it’s nicer to customize those things (much like Widgets :).

for my next one I’ll use yours now - thanks :) much appreciated :)

I’ve never thought of using Sandbox or stripping down the default theme. I like to build from scratch or use my own base template.

I’ll be interested in going through your theme and seeing what if anything I can pull from it…

What would be cool (and helpful) would be a barebones, non-formatted or minimal formatted CMS/blogging software. Just the scary stuff running in the background, but something that can give you ultimate control over styling without getting too deep into the ‘hardcore’ stuff :)

Does this sort of thing exist already?

Very strange timing — I’ve been sitting here all afternoon building a custom baseline Wordpress theme for these exact purposes.

So far I’ve grabbed some essential bits from K2, Sandbox, SEO-Sandbox, Cutline and a few others and combined them with my own CSS framework. As Jina said, Sandbox is worth checking out to adapt some of the Microformats stuff.

Anyway, I installed the Starkers theme and had a few suggestions (if you’re taking them!) …

It looks like you’re using ‘functions.php’ leftover from the Kubrick theme. This file actually has some security vulnerabilities, not to mention most of it doesn’t apply to the Starkers theme. The ‘functions.php’ file for Sandbox actually contains lots of helpful bits which really leverage WP as a CMS. The functions file for K2 also has some tricky stuff in there, esp if you’re fond of building control panel options.

Consider getting rid of other files which come with Kubrick but rarely get used: ‘attachments.php’, ‘rtl.css’, etc. Consider adding files which get used with every site, like print.css.

For SEO/organization purposes, consider using more advanced conditionals for the <title> tag

Separate trackbacks from comments in the ‘comments.php’ template

Insert conditionals which print sublevel nav if you’re on a parent Page

These are just some features I know I use over and over, maybe they’ll be helpful to others too.

I will have to take a look at yours when I get to coding my new site up, now that I have decided to stick with Wordpress instead of moving to Expression Engine.

I’m actully using a modified version of the aforementioned “Sandbox” theme. It works great, and I encourage you to look at it and see what you can borrow (if anything) — I’ll definitely keep this theme in mind for my future projects.

Its full of excess junk that is so pointless and to be honest probably holds more junk than the default theme.

I am looking forward in using your theme man!
Thanks

“When was the last time you used a Bevel, Elliot?”
“Oh, about 5pm on 27.01.08, when I built a “download” icon for my `Free ‘Starkers’ Wordpress theme` blog post”

Haaaaaaaahaaaaaa…

Many thanks, and keep up the good work!

OOT: If i open with IE there is added banner to not use IE. Is it a plugins? Or a self ceation. Thanks.

I’d like to thank Jina again for telling me about Sandbox. Quite a few of you mentioned the theme and I’ve now spent a while looking into it. Right now, I can’t wait to try it out - although not as ‘naked’ as I’d like it to be (and so I may well make my own simplified version) the dynamic class name stuff it boasts is very cool. As soon as I’ve experimented with it, I’ll blog about my findings.

@ Tom Hoad: I think the CMS you described pretty much sounds like Wordpress, to be honest. But if you don’t want to touch any code at all, Expression Engine appears to hide the code away a bit more, so it might be worth looking into that. This is what I’ve been told, anyway.

@ Darren Hoyt: Thanks for the suggestions. As it currently stands, ‘Starkers’ is simply a cut-back version of the K2 theme, but now that I’ve looked into Sandbox, I’m seriously considering making a new ‘base’ theme. If so, I’ll try and incorporate some of your suggestions.

@ Dave Stewart (1): I’ll have to take your word for it about the WP backend, mate - I’m afraid I was talking about it in terms of markup rather than PHP.

@ Jermayn Parker: I don’t know… to me it seems like the stuff in Sandbox is also pretty relevant if you want to use its dynamic class names. But you’re right: it’s not naked. My advice to people would be this: if you want a good, solid base theme to work from that has advanced functionality you might want to tap into, use Sandbox. If you just want a plain, easy-to-use version of the K2 theme, use Starkers.

@ Dave Stewart (2): Oi, cheeky! ;) But yes… *ahem* … well spotted.

@ Hning: It’s a bit off-topic, but the IE thing is simply achieved by using conditional comments to serve up an IE-specific sylesheet. Take a look at the source code for more details.

ps: can u organize a web designer conference in london please?there are always based in the states…:( like aneventapart I might ask too much?

see ya
riccardo :)

Will definitely be putting this guy to use. Thanks!

Love the site and i love the template but what puzzles me is why you haven’t stripped all the bespoke functions that are used in the kubrick theme to configure the header color… as in this template there completely obsolete.

Thanks for the starting point tho!! great idea..

As mentioned above, removing functions.php would be a good improvement (or, at the very least, empty it and just leave open/close PHP tags). The other thing that would be nice is if the comments.php file was updated now that Wordpress 2.5 has built in gravatars.

Excellent stuff, and very much appreciated. :)

I am currently getting my teeth into ZenGarden, but I have not found any quality tutorial sites for css or wordpress?

The standard i am looking for is inline with PSDTUTS.com

Can anyone help?

Does starkers still work with the latest Wordpress release?

Thanks!

Thank you for doing all the hard work, and making it available to the rest of us.

On the “single.php” file, the closing div tag for the class=”post” div is missing. Just a quick fix =).

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selamlar