12 Days of XHTML, Day 10: Default WordPress Theme for Developers
With WordPress 3.0 came the rollout of a new theme, TwentyTen which was WP’s way of saying “Hey look at how complicated we can make our code with custom functions aimed at child themes cluttering up the default theme.” If you’re a beginner just diving into learning how the WordPress’ templates work, then I would highly recommend going back and looking through the old Kubrick theme, rather than trying to learn from the tangled mess of insanity that can, at times, be the new WP default theme (though it’s a pretty one, and nice and flexible.)
With that said, I’m providing a link here to a very basic WordPress theme. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a theme, more of a framework to build your theme around. No fancy custom function dependencies (though the functions.php file does have a handful of custom functions built into it which I use often, feel free to delete them as needed, they’re all clearly commented.)
Download the ClickNathan Default WP Theme for Developers (ZIP, 58kb)
Again, what this is not is a completed theme for installing to your site and expecting to see anything fancy or even necessarily functional. What this is are all of the basic files you need to get a theme started.
ZIP File Content:
- 404.php
- comments.php – pretty much the old WP Default Themes’ file exactly.
- footer.php
- functions.php – with some custom functions in there to make things easier in my life, and maybe yours, too.
- header.php – with a few extras like a call to a javascript file (not included) and favicon.
- index.php
- page.php
- screenshot.png – just open this up and edit it to your liking in Photoshop.
- sidebar.php
- single.php
- style.css
- unknown.php – I call this file in the event that a categories or archives page with no posts is called, a single post page for a post that doesn’t exist, even in my 404.php file, so that I can present a consistent, easy to manage errors page.
Up Next: 12 Days of XHTML, Day 11: Custom WordPress Functions.php File