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Help needed with Wordpress theme

  • Hi everyone,

    I just got into Wordpress and making custom themes for it. But I can't understand the structure of the already existing themes. I'm looking for a verry simplistic (without any css) theme that I can easely understand and customise. I've already tried Starkers and Bones but both of them have a confusing structure.. The functions are way to complicated for a beginner I found. I can't seem to figure out how most functions work and such. Please help! If you want to help me make a theme please let me know! Or if you know/have a simple theme wich doesn't use complicated functions please share it with me :)

  • @Jochim That's just how Wordpress is. It takes some time to learn. If you want something really easy without a database, try Kirby.

  • You're probably looking to build a child theme. It takes an existing theme as a starting point and then allows you to overwrite the CSS and PHP templates as needed. To learn more check out this video on WordPress.tv and the codex

    Underscores is a sorta-like-html5-boilerplate theme for WordPress, created by Automattic, that would be a good theme to build a child theme from. Another option is the minimal new Twenty Twelve theme.

  • I prefer the HTML5 Reset Wordpress Theme: http://html5reset.org/#wordpress

  • Yeah, I use the same thing as @chrisburton . It works pretty well. I like it a lot.

  • Sounds like you need to do some more research on WordPress before you start with theme customization. Not a lot because the best way to learn is through experimentation. Just take a look a The Codex and see what all those functions do. The most basic starter theme I used before is Chris' Blank Theme although a bit out-dated now, still a very good base for any theme. I have since started using Underscores and it's awesome, but I can see where a beginner may get confused with it. Good luck with everything.