Twist is a no-nonsense WordPress starter theme that doesn’t assume anything about what kind of theme you want to build, while offering you a solid toolbox to create your own theme from scratch.
Pair with the WP CLI Zip Package for easy theme builds.
What’s Included
Twist is an ultra minimal starter theme loaded with all the features you need ready to go at a moment’s notice. The theme itself includes practically nothing, but the ingredients provided will allow you to create almost anything your heart desires.
Please remember, Twist is not designed to be shipped as-is. It merely provides you with the tools you need to get an elegant and fully functional project running quickly. Those tools are as follows.
DRY Theme Wrappers
Keep your templates DRY with a theme wrapper, instead of the traditional get_header(); and get_footer(); tags.
Wrappers are based on Scribu’s Theme Wrapper.
FontAwesome
FontAwesome 4.7.0 comes bundled and ready for action.
SCSS Libraries: Bourbon & Neat
While Bootstrap and Foundation are great frameworks when you’re in a pinch for production, I usually find they are a little much for my from-scratch themes.
I use Bourbon and Neat to write fast, flexible, and completely custom styles from scratch without having to reinvent the wheel. Think about Twist like walking into a room with thousands of art supplies. Individually, each supply don’t mean much, but when you pair them with a little creativity on the canvas, you are only limited by your imagination.
Learn more about using Bourbon and Neat here:
Meanwhile, the default CSS to get you started is Normalize.css.
Responsive Typographic Baseline
The future of your theme’s typography rests in your hands. However, I believe in using a solid baseline to keep everything mathamatical and clean automatically.
Twist offers you Devin Hunt’s typebase.css.
Future Features
As I continue to use Twist for projects, I will continue adding the features that make from-scratch theme development simple. Here are a few ideas I hope to add one day. Feel free to make a pull request and add your own feature!
- Some more basic templating included
- Default supports for the basics that should really come baked in with every theme, like a Customizer class, Widgets class, and so on
- Material Design mixins for shadows, forms, and buttons
Getting Started
Twist uses SASS. To generate the necessary WordPress files, use this command within the terminal in your project folder:
sass --watch _scss/style.scss:style.css --style compressed
Beyond that, everything runs fairly normally!
Wrapping Up
I use the WP CLI Zip Package to create deliverable .zip folders once my theme is completed.
A few tips for future compatibility:
As this is a new project, things are going to change a lot and become more modularized to help with future updates. For now, keep things as clean as possible by controlling your settings using the existing variables.
- Customize your typography settings in scss/baselines/typography.scss
- Set your themes’s colors in scss/baselines/colors.scss
- For new theme styles, add your own templates under the /templates/ folder. Best naming structure is to match the .scss file name to the .php template it customizes. Don’t forget to reference your new .scss in the main.scss page!