Joe Trotter discusses his distaste for default wordpress designs and laments on the cookie cutter appeal wordpress has on it’s average users. Most will agree that the default themes suit the average user and at the same time fails the designer; although his impression is that MoveableType is the king for design bloggers, that maybe based on early adoption for those leaders, and mass market appeal of WP.
Regardless of where you stand, if you want to create a wordpress driven theme, a designer should start any process from the ground up, as Gruber notes. To help you in that, I share my base theme via zip:
No Style WordPress Theme Zip
Each and every site I boast with wordpress, starts with that code. No redundant classes or ID’s, no container divs unless sworn in need – all ready to be cut apart and rebuilt without the strife of bloated code. My latest WordPress CMS, Kamalaspa, complete with custom Newsletter engine, started with that bare bones default, Photoshop files, mockup XHTML, and a couple weeks of tears.
Download and share how you will, commercial or otherwise; this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, all I ask is you share and help your fellow coder!