21 Best WordPress Starter Themes for Developers in 2016

Are you just getting started with WordPress theme development? WordPress starter themes help you get started with a solid foundation. In this article, we have hand-picked the best WordPress starter themes for theme developers.

What is a WordPress Starter Theme

A WordPress Starter theme is a blank theme with minimum design, and a basic or absolutely no layout. These themes usually come with the most commonly used templates in a WordPress theme.

They have code to display posts, archive pages, single posts, comments, but with minimum or no styling at all. This allows theme developers to quickly start adding their own styles to build a totally new theme.

Starter themes are different than a parent theme or a theme framework. Parent themes are fully styled WordPress themes designed to be installed and used on live websites. Theme frameworks provide a lot of hooks and filters for usage in child theme development.

Starter themes do not come with styling, you are not supposed to use them as it is, and they are not frameworks with custom hooks, filters, and template tags.

Instead, you use a starter theme to build a parent theme.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best starter themes for WordPress.

1. Underscores

Underscores is probably the most popular of all WordPress starter themes. Maintained by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com blog hosting service), Underscores is a minimalist starter theme written in HTML5 and CSS. The clean code is meant to get out of your way and help you quickly build a standard compliant WordPress theme.

2. Components

From the folks behind Underscores comes Components. It is basically 6 starter themes for different kind of websites. Currently there is a base, blog, blog modern, portfolio, business, and magazine starter theme available for download.

3. Bones

Bones is a WordPress starter theme developed with a focus on mobile-first approach. It uses Sass and comes equipped with ready to use code for custom post types and custom dashboard functions.

4. Sage

Sage is a modern WordPress starter theme based on Gulp, Bootstrap, and Bower. It uses a Theme Wrapper which helps you avoid repeating the same code in every template. Sage is actively maintained and has a strong following among WordPress front-end developers.

5. FoundationPress

Based on Foundation 6 framework, FoundationPress is a modern WordPress starter theme. It comes with clean semantic code and powerful customization features that make it easier for you to rapidly build WordPress themes.

6. UnderStrap

UnderStrap is a WordPress starter theme based on Underscores and Bootstrap 4. It comes with a mobile first, responsive grid framework, and its super easy to customize.

7. Bootstrap Four

As the name suggests, Bootstrap Four is a WordPress starter theme based on Bootstrap 4 framework. It provides a clean code base for theme developer to do whatever they want.

8. WP RootStrap

WP Rootstrap is a Boostrap 3 based WordPress starter theme for developers. It uses Options Framework for theme options.

9. Generic

Generic is a simple WordPress starter theme. Generic is plain and just as minimal as you would like your starter theme to be.

10. BlankSlate

Blankslate is a simple and extremely flexible WordPress starter theme. It is designed with developers in mind. It is simple yet comes with powerful foundation for your themes to rely on.

11. CyberChimps

CyberChimps is a fully responsive WordPress starter theme built with Bootstrap. It comes with a touch-friendly drag and drop options panel which allows users to customize their site using touch devices.

12. Klasik Framework

Built with quicker theme development in mind, Klasik Framework is a simple starter theme for WordPress. Theme features 9 widget area, 8 custom widget and simple Theme Option for full CMS control

13. Start

Start is based on Underscores starter theme and Bootstrap framework. It inherits all the code of Underscores and adds Bootstrap magic for rapid front-end development.

14. A11Y’All

If accessibility is a main concern for you, then you will love A11Y’All. It is a WordPress starter theme designed from scratch with accessibility in mind. It includes page templates and customizable menus, header, widgets and background.

15. Cornerstone

Cornerstone is a modern starter theme for WordPress developers. It is based on the popular Foundation framework. It comes ready with custom header, sidebar, widgets, and navigation menu locations pre-defined.

16. WP-Flex

WP-Flex is a blank WordPress theme or starter theme. It adheres to WordPress coding best practices and guidelines provided by WordPress theme review team. This basic theme can be a good starting point for any custom WordPress design.

17. JointsWP

JointsWP is a rock solid WordPress starter theme. It is based on the Foundation 6 framework and comes in CSS or Sass flavors.

18. _tk

Themekraft’s _tK is modern responsive WordPress starter theme. It is based on Twitter’s Bootstrap framework and the Underscores starter theme.

19. Quark

Quark is an easy to customize WordPress starter theme. It is based on Underscores and Twenty Twelve WordPress theme. It uses Normalize to make sure that browsers render all elements more consistently and Mordernizr for detecting HTML5 and CSS3 browser capabilities.

20. Nebula

Nebula is an advanced WordPress starter theme that is more like framework but not completely a framework. It is a starter theme with lots of custom functionality like recommendation engine for 404 and no-search-result pages, and Autocomplete Search, etc.

21. HTML5Blank

HTML5Blank is a easy to use WordPress starter theme. It is based on clean HTML5 and CSS3 templates with ready to use code and template tags for you to utilize during your theme development.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress starter theme for developers. You may also want to see our guide on how to add dummy content for theme development in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 21 Best WordPress Starter Themes for Developers in 2016 appeared first on WPBeginner.

14 Best WordPress Magazine Themes of 2016

If you have a content rich website and you’re looking for a new theme, then you probably want a WordPress magazine theme. It gives you freedom to break the typical layout and showcase more of your articles, videos, and images. There are hundreds perhaps thousands of magazine style WordPress themes in the market. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress magazine themes available.

Getting Started with a WordPress Magazine Theme

First thing you will need to run a WordPress site is a web hosting. Magazine sites are content rich, and you will need to choose a web hosting company that can handle your traffic.

If you are just starting out, then we recommend going with BlueHost. It is one of the best shared hosting company and also one of the official WordPress hosting providers.

If you can afford to spend a little more, then we would recommend you to go with WPEngine. It is a managed WordPress hosting service, which means they will handle everything technical for you.

For more information check our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting for your website.

Some of you may already have a WordPress site, and you may just want to switch to a magazine theme. Make sure you understand what happens when you switch your WordPress theme and follow our checklist of 15 things you must do before changing WordPress themes.

Having said that, let’s check out some of the best WordPress magazine themes you can use on your site.

1. Paperback

Paperback is an elegant WordPress magazine theme with tons of awesome features. It is designed to beautifully display content in a magazine layout. It prominently uses featured images from your articles throughout the layout. It also comes with a built-in featured posts slider for the homepage.

It pays special attention to readability across devices, the typography looks equally great on mobile and desktop. It has a category mega menu which displays featured content from those categories beautifully.

Paperback offers multiple color choices, homepage layouts, and slick content discovery features.

2. ModernMag

Modern Mag is a beautiful and modern looking magazine theme for WordPress. It comes with color variations and custom templates to easily build your own custom magazine site with WordPress in minutes.

Modern Mag is SEO friendly by design and it is highly optimized for speed. Faster page loads means better search rankings. It comes with built-in integration of social media making it super easy for you to connect a magazine site to its social pages.

It comes with an easy to use theme customizer which allows you to setup your site with a live preview next to it. Unlike other magazine themes, Modern Mag is bloat free and does not confuse users with overly complicated theme options.

3. Baseline

Baseline is a modern WordPress magazine style theme. It features large images on the homepage, which makes your content more visually stunning.

In the header section it has featured content carousel, a mega menu of categories with images, sliding sidebars, and social media integration.

Typography is one of the most elegant features of the theme. It is beautiful across different devices and improves reading experience. The homepage has one, two, and three column layouts with multiple color options.

4. Poseidon

Poseidon is a free WordPress magazine theme. It comes with a large full-width slider on top, clean typography, and a spacious white layout.

The theme features a magazine homepage layout with custom widgets designed to work on magazine homepage. It also comes with theme-specific options which can be setup using customizer.

5. NewsAnchor Pro

As the name suggests the, NewsAnchor Pro is a WordPress news and magazine theme. It comes with multiple page layouts, including multiple layouts for the homepage.

The theme has three extra widgets for your front page so you can create a complete magazine layout. These widgets are: a posts carousel widget, a featured images widget and a widget that displays four categories.

6. Responz

Responz is a three column news and magazine theme for WordPress. It features an elegant design with great typography and fully responsive layout.

It comes with multiple layout options like 2 sidebars, 1 sidebar, or full width homepage. You can also choose from the list view or grid view post layouts. It has built-in sliders, custom widgets, and shortcodes.

7. Oblique

Oblique is a free magazine WordPress theme with a beautiful masonry layout. It features a beautiful parallax header, unlimited color choices, homepage templates, etc.

8. Magazine PRO

Magazine pro is premium WordPress magazine theme by StudioPress. It is built on top of Genesis theme framework, which means it comes with rock solid code.

The theme comes with multiple page templates for homepage, blog, and landing pages. It has three widgetized areas for homepage. It is easy to customize and setup using theme customizer.

9. Candid

Candid is a beautiful WordPress magazine theme designed to tell rich content stories. The theme focuses on improved readability with beautiful typography that looks great on all devices.

The homepage comes with a masonry layout that can be one, two, or three column layouts. It also supports infinite scroll, which lets your visitors seamlessly load more of your content without leaving the page.

10. Domino Magazine

Domino Magazine is a highly customizable WordPress magazine theme. The homepage features multiple widgetized areas and a dynamic page builder. It comes with built-in news ticker, weather widget, and a tabbed widget.

The theme also allows you to easily add custom background, headers, sliders, and your own logo.

11. Hueman

Hueman is a popular free WordPress theme beautiful magazine style layout. It comes with multiple page templates giving you the option to choose between two or three column layouts.

It also allows users to toggle sidebars to create more reading space. Hueman has a theme options panel which allows you to fully customize it to match your needs.

12. Author

Author is a premium WordPress theme designed for writers, bloggers, and authors. It features a spacious layout with lots of white space and beautiful typography.

It has a featured post carousel to display your most important content on the top. It allows you to use videos and images as featured images for your articles. It has built-in support for galleries, beautiful image displays, pullquotes, and much more to elegantly enhance reading experience.

13. ColorMag

ColorMag is a beautiful free WordPress magazine theme. It feature 15+ widget ready areas with 6 custom widgets which allow you to setup your site in many different ways. It also has multiple color options and the ability to set a primary color for your theme.

14. Alpha

Alpha is powerful WordPress news/magazine style theme. It comes with two skins for magazine or news websites. Each skin will radically change your site’s layout and you can choose the one that meets your needs.

Among other features, it comes with a breaking news ticker and a custom slider. It also comes with a video widget to showcase your video content on the homepage.

We hope this list helped you choose the best WordPress magazine theme for your website. You may also want to see our list of 10 WordPress plugins that will quickly help you get more traffic

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best WordPress Magazine Themes of 2016 appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Add Odd/Even Class to Your Post in WordPress Themes

Do you want to add Odd and Even classes to posts in your WordPress theme? Adding an odd and even class allows you to style every other post differently. In this article, we will show you how to add odd/even class to your post in WordPress themes.

Why Add Odd/Even Class to Your Posts in WordPress Themes?

Many WordPress themes use an old or even class for WordPress comments. It helps users visualize where one comment ends and the next one begins.

Similarly, you can use this technique for your WordPress posts. It looks aesthetically pleasing and helps users quickly scan pages with lots of content. It is particularly helpful for homepage of magazine or news websites.

Having said that, let’s see how to add an odd and even class to your posts in WordPress theme.

Adding Odd/Even Class to Posts in WordPress Theme

WordPress generates default CSS classes and adds them to different items on your website on the fly. These CSS classes help plugin and theme developers add their own styles for different items.

WordPress also comes with a function called post_class, which is used by theme developers to add classes to post item. See our guide on how to style each WordPress post differently.

The post_class is also a filter, which means you can hook your own functions to it. This is exactly what we will be doing here.

Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function oddeven_post_class ( $classes ) {
   global $current_class;
   $classes[] = $current_class;
   $current_class = ($current_class == 'odd') ? 'even' : 'odd';
   return $classes;
}
add_filter ( 'post_class' , 'oddeven_post_class' );
global $current_class;
$current_class = 'odd';

This function simply adds odd to the first post, then even, and so on.

You can find the odd and even classes in your site’s source code. Simply take mouse to a post title and then right click to select Inspect or Inspect Element.

Now that you have added even and odd classes to your posts. The next step is to style them using CSS. You can add your custom CSS to your child theme’s stylesheet, or by using Simple Custom CSS plugin.

Here is a sample CSS that you can use as a starting point:

.even {
background:#f0f8ff;  
} 
.odd {
 background:#f4f4fb;
}

This is how it looked on our test site:

If you don’t know how to use CSS, then you may want to check out CSS Hero. It allows you to add CSS to any part of your WordPress site without writing any code.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add odd/even class to your posts in WordPress themes. You may also want to see our guide on how to style your WordPress comments layout.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Odd/Even Class to Your Post in WordPress Themes appeared first on WPBeginner.

17 Best WordPress Resume Themes for Your Online CV

Are you looking for a CV or Resume theme for WordPress? Building an online resume with your CV can help you build a personal brand, find job, and make new contacts. WordPress is an ideal platform to build your professional online presence. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress resume themes.

Getting Started with Your Online Resume Wesbite

In order to create your online CV or Resume website with WordPress, first you will need a domain and hosting.

We recommend using Bluehost because they are an official WordPress recommended hosting provider, and they are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 60% off + a free domain name.

For more recommendations, you may want to checkout our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

Once you have setup your domain and hosting, you will need to install WordPress. See our step by step guide on how to install WordPress for detailed instructions.

Once you have installed WordPress, you can then install a WordPress resume theme on your website.

Having said that, here is our pick of the best WordPress resume themes in the market (both free and paid).

1. Get Noticed

Created by Michael Hyatt, Get Noticed is a premium WordPress theme for establishing your personal brand on the web. It is one of the most expensive WordPress themes in the market. But it is very easy to use, quick to setup, and flexible with customization.

Our company’s CEO and founder, Syed Balkhi uses Get Noticed on his personal website.

2. MyResume

This simple one-page WordPress theme is designed to showcase your work and academic history on single page. You will need to visit Appearance » Customize to setup the theme and fill different sections of your CV/Resume.

3. Hired

Hired is a free WordPress theme for professionals to display resume and contact information. It comes with built-in social menu icons, responsive layout, and each section of the homepage can be easily setup from theme customizer.

4. ResuMe

ResuMe is a free WordPress theme to create a cover letter, resume, and portfolio. It comes with a template to create a cover letter and resume. It also comes with built-in portfolio feature. Theme has option to turn off sidebar for printing and you can also turn off comments form.

5. Portfolio

Portfolio is a clean minimalist WordPress theme to showcase your professional work. It comes with built in option to filter your portfolio items. Apart from other premium theme features, it comes with beautiful typography and unlimited sidebars. It can be easily used to build a resume website with portfolio.

6. MyResume

MyResume is a WordPress resume theme developed by Elegant Themes. It comes with options to create a portfolio, add biographical and professional information, and social media integration.

7. Resume

Resume is a premium WordPress theme for creative CV and resume. This stunningly beautiful theme comes with a sleek homepage layout with large full screen header with parallax effect. It comes with built-in portfolio, homepage navigation menu, and multiple custom widgets.

8. Web Designer Resume

As the name suggests, Web Designer Resume is a WordPress theme for Web designers to showcase their resume. It also comes with built in portfolio, custom page templates, custom widgets, and 80+ shortcodes.

9. CV Card

CV Card is a free cv card WordPress theme for professionals. The theme have 6 custom page templates for your about, blog, contact, homepage, portfolio, and resume pages. It also comes with portfolio custom post type.

10. Personal Page

Personal Page is a WordPress theme for individual professionals to showcase their resume and CV. It comes with built-in portfolio, services, and testimonials section. The homepage features a parallax layout with large typography and beautiful visual effects.

11. Swiftly

Swiftly comes with a unique layout for WordPress resume theme. It features a minimalist, responsive and elegant design for any kind of professionals to show their resume (education, work experience, skill set etc.) and portfolio in a unique way.

12. Demian

Demian is a resume WordPress theme for professionals. It features a one-page layout that you can use to display your skills, portfolio, and biographical information. It can also be used as a multi-page theme with different templates for homepage and content pages.

13. True North

True North is a responsive WordPress theme for professionals. It comes with built-in portfolio content type and custom widgets for social profiles, Flickr, testimonials, etc. It comes with a powerful options panel which makes it quite easy to customize and build a professional resume website.

14. Emerald CV

Emerald CV is a beautiful WordPress resume theme with tons of styling and customization options. It comes with a powerful theme customizer, Google fonts, icon fonts and social media icons. You can choose between boxed or wide layout options with unlimited color choices.

15. Corner

Corner is a beautiful WordPress theme for professionals and individuals. It is fully widgetized, which allows you to build your own homepage using custom widgets. It has a minimalist design with unlimited color choices, portfolio content type, and shortcodes. It is also WooCommerce ready, which means you can use it to sell anything from your resume website.

16. OneEngine

OneEngine is a one-page WordPress theme for professionals. It comes with built-in portfolio, services, and testimonials content types. This fully responsive theme can be easily used as professional one-page CV or resume theme for WordPress.

17. Ultra Theme

Ultra is a powerful and flexible theme created by Themify that allows you to take full-control of your website using unlimited layouts and a drag & drop builder. This theme is fully responsive and can easily be used as a one-page CV or resume for WordPress.

Bonus Plugin

18. Resume Builder

If you already have a WordPress site or a theme that you like and want to add a professional resume, then Resume Builder is the plugin for you. It comes with an easy to use interface to create your resume. For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to create a professional online resume in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you find the best CV and resume theme for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for Business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 17 Best WordPress Resume Themes for Your Online CV appeared first on WPBeginner.