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WordPress WordPress Theme Development Starting a WordPress Theme WordPress Theme Development Course Overview

Alfredo Gago
Alfredo Gago
1,390 Points

Theme Frameworks or Starter themes recommended?

I've been looking at frameworks, mostly interested because of options and customization, I was thinking about Gantry, Redux, Whitelabel or Fluent for frameworks and _underscores or bones for starter themes.

So far I've been buying all my themes from themeforest and that's what I install for my clients, but now I want to make themes for clients myself as well as for reselling in themeforest, so I want an easy way to implement options and customization, any recommendations? I'm about to start watching the Theme Development course

Jeremy Castanza
Jeremy Castanza
12,081 Points

Wordpress Frameworks are pretty new to me. I've seen Genesis recommended a lot. Haven't tried it personally. For the most part, I just use Bootstrap. It's bulky, but it's one of those things... when you find a method to developing, it works.

3 Answers

Hey Alfredo!

From personal experience, the best way I learnt was using Automattic's Underscores starter theme.

They have great documentation throughout the files for you to wrap your head around whats going on. In time you will grow very familiar with whats going on and exactly what to do to fulfil exactly what your clients needs are.

Seeing as you have purchased themes online, go through them and break down what they are doing in the files to get a better understanding of whats going on. These all add up to the quality of your themes.

At the end of the day it all comes down to personal preference. I hope this helps!

Heiko Mlodystach
Heiko Mlodystach
438 Points

I'd second that! Underscores is great and leaves out pretty much all of the common bloat.

Alfredo Gago
Alfredo Gago
1,390 Points

Thank you, I'll start with Underscores then, but what do you usually use for theme options customizer then? Theme customizer is the main feature I liked about those others, been seeing Titan, seems it's compatible and I can download a starter theme that uses underscores+titan.

Or should I just use Underscores + Wordpress default customizer?