A WordPress Theme from Scratch

Introducing Scratch, a blank-slate WordPress theme for web developers. The theme has no CSS. It’s a foundation, intended to be expanded & built upon. It’s the perfect way to build your own WordPress theme from scratch.

Check out Scratch

Cleaning up after WordPress

I build a lot of custom WordPress themes (1 2 3 4 5). I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning up Automattic’s mess. I’m tired of implementing my own semantic class & ID names and removing unnecessary calls to PHP functions. So, I decided to start from scratch.

I removed all CSS. I added semantic class & ID names. I structured the HTML elements in a clean, simple way. And I followed a simple naming convention. All things WordPress should do themselves.

It’s not your grandfather’s WordPress theme

It’s not your typical one-click install kind of theme (except on CSS naked day) and it’s not for everyone. It’s for web designers & developers who do more than install plugins & widgets. It’s for geeks who like digging through WordPress’ code.

I created a theme that provides a foundation for further customization. It’s like starting from scratch.

It’s not really a theme at all

Scratch isn’t really a “theme.” It’s not a design. It’s the intentional lack of a design. But, by WordPress’ terminology, it’s technically a theme. You can, if you want, install & activate it on your WordPress blog. But I don’t recommend it.

I hope you’ll download it, install it, rename it (please!), and customize it like crazy.

Eric Meyer has CSS Resets

Meyer’s work in CSS resets changed the way many people write (and understand) CSS. I’m hoping to follow that model & provide a WordPress Reset. It may not be as big as Meyer’s resets, but I think it could be helpful to a lot of people.