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I found this "blank" theme, but I was wondering if there are any other themes that provide a template for custom theme development.

I'm looking for something that, out of the box, provides a very simple theme with validating HTML (XHTML1.1, HTML 4.1 Strict, or HTML5) and CSS (CSS2 or CSS3). Then, I want to build on this theme to make a custom WordPress theme for my personal site/blog.

I've never developed a WordPress theme, but armed with the documentation and a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and a bit of PHP experience, I should be able to make something that's my own.

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I suggest you commit to the Wordpress propsal and help get it off the ground. – Mark Henderson Jul 23 '10 at 2:23
Done. I can definitly see both this place being useful once I get my site off the ground and the WordPress proposal being good for WordPress-specific problems. Thanks for that link. – Thomas Owens Jul 23 '10 at 9:38

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up vote 11 down vote accepted

This should be just what you're looking for: http://nathanstaines.com/archive/starkers-html5-v3

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I'm going to have to try it before I accept, but that looks pretty slick. An immediate up vote simply because it's HTML5 and WordPress 3. I'll be reading about it in depth and trying it this weekend, that's for sure. – Thomas Owens Jul 23 '10 at 2:13
I found it a few months back, when it was mentioned on Smashing Magazine's Twitter stream. Hope it helps. – intlect Jul 23 '10 at 2:18
+1 - Thanks for pointing this out! Looks like there's a few active forks of starkers – Tim Post♦ Jul 23 '10 at 8:14
Thanks! Never even thought to look for this, but this should really help instead of hacking the default theme! – Darryl Hein Jul 23 '10 at 13:35
+1 Ooh, I've used starkers before as a base for a theme, but didn't know it had been updated. – Grant Palin Jul 23 '10 at 19:31
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up vote 1 down vote

Going through the link that intlect provided along with the comment by Tim Post that there are other forks of Starkers, I found references to Thematic. It appears to have some styling, but it also appears to provide valid XHTML and CSS (not validated by me since I haven't installed it yet, though). There are also existing themes built using it as a framework so you can see what other people have managed to do from this starting point.

It also appears that WordPress supports the notion of child themes. This allows any existing theme to be used as a framework, however it might not be appropriate for every theme out there.

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I would recommend against Thematic. Tons of crappy CSS choices that I had to undo when I went to customize it. – Matt M. Sep 23 '11 at 1:41

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