With WordPress 3.5 just days away from being released and me actually having a few WP projects to work on in the near future, I thought it time to update the blankSlate starter theme. You can read the rest of this post, or quickly download the new version of theme now.

Now for the details… The intent of this theme remains the same, a good starting point for creating your own custom themes. The execution is slightly different this time around. First off, the framework of this theme is based off of the excellent twentytwelve theme that ships with WordPress 3.5. While writing your own themes from scratch is something everyone should do at least once, the fact of the matter is I am a UI guy and I don’t want to deal with basic functionality if I don’t have to, so I adapt a rock solid theme to use as the underpinning. As in previous versions of the theme all style and unnecessary mark-up are removed. This time around however, the reset and base styles are based in part by the current html5-boilerplate project, jquery is being automatically included from Google’s cdn network and the theme will now be hosted on github.

I have used a modified version of Eric Meyer’s reset css for what seems like forever. Over the last year and a half as I have been using more HTML5 and CSS3 in my projects I have transitioned away from the simple reset in favor of Boilerplate’s more robust solution. With that in mind, I made the switch in the new version of blankSlate so I wouldn’t have to make this change every time I start a new WordPress theme.

Jquery and a starter JavaScript file are being automatically enqued (the right way) simply because I use it in my projects considerably more often than not. This might only save me a couple of minutes each project, but really that adds up overtime. Since the new theme is using HTML5, I have also included modenizr.js right off the bat to help with older browser compatibilities.

The last major difference is that this project is now being hosted on GitHub. I do realize that where you download a project from doesn’t matter that much, but the reasoning behind it does. My hope with putting it up on GitHub is that more people from the WordPress community will begin to contribute to this project, and we will not only end up with a better project, but it will keep being updated when I am otherwise unable to do so. That and really, using some sort of version control is the smart thing to do.

So go fourth and download, clone or fork the theme to your hearts content. As always, you can do whatever you want to this theme and I don’t care about getting credit for it. All I care about is that it helps you in future projects. If it does, feel free to tell someone else it might help about it. Also, if you would like an improvement made, please fork the project and send me a pull request after you make the change, or just tell me about it and I can update the theme for all.

Download blankSlate theme here

This theme is completely free to do with as you please. It is released under the GNU General Public License with no strings attached except for one: If you find this useful, and know someone else that might find it useful as well, tell them about it!

Disclaimer: This theme is offered for free, and “as is”. I will try to help out where I can though, so if you run into any issues, please comment on this post and I will do what I can to help. That being said, there is no warranty, or guarantee that I will be able to offer support.