New Default WordPress Theme?

I think that to please more people, you actually need two (or possibly more) themes to be bundled.

The first theme, should be very simple. It should contain the basics information that a newbie needs to get started. It should be heavily commented to make modification easier for novices. It should not try to be clever, or to introduce too many concepts. This would be the actual “default” theme.

The second theme, would be more complex. It would be used to show people how to do slightly more fancy stuff with their layouts, introduce further advanced concepts, perhaps require or suggest a higher level of coding knowledge, but still be relatively heavy on comments. This is to satisfy those who want a learning point, or a basis for other themes.

I enjoyed reading everyone’s ideas. There are a lot of good suggestions here. Here are my thoughts:

The default WP theme first and foremost should serve as a great starting point for new themes as Kubrik is today. The css tags and layout/structure should remain similar in the new version. I don’t think the default theme should be a complex theme framework. I do think that it should demonstrate what is possible to do with WP, such as displaying horizontal lists of both categories and pages, thumbnail images, and several sidebars.

The default theme should define the sidebars that most themes will support. Just because there are lots of sidebars does NOT mean they all need to be used. Rather they serve as a way for WP to be used more like a CMS for those that want to. If nothing is added to a sidebar, it wouldn’t display. Eg if Left Nav and Right Nav 1 was left blank, you’d have a traditional single right-nav layout.

* Header (add social networking icons, ad block, etc.)
* Page Top
* Main Content Top
* Left Nav 1 (doesn’t show if empty)
* Left Nav 2
* Right Nav 1
* Right Nav 2
* Main Content Bottom
* Page Bottom
* Footer (add nav, popular posts, recent comments, etc.)

I’d like the theme to be fast and if adding options for fonts, colors, etc. will slow it down too much, then I’d suggest just putting DEFINE’s all in a single location in the theme so that people can easily change them there. Note that options for number of columns that people have suggested wouldn’t be needed if you use the multiple “sidebars” approach above.

I’d like to see the default theme include a layout for every layout that exists (home, author, etc.). People have suggested including multiple themes, but I think we just need multiple home and page templates. For example:

* Home – Magazine Style (thumbnails, large format for sticky or featured posts, smaller format or just small thumbnail and title/date/comment count for articles by category)
* Home – Blog Style with Excerpts
* Home – Blog Style with Full Posts
* Page – Standard Width
* Page – Full Width
* Page – Contact Form

Let’s also reflect that the web is *social* in 2010 and by default display comments inline and display a small comment box that grows as you type when you hit reply instead of loading the single post page. This doesn’t necessarily need ajax, but at least simple javascript to hide/display the comment box.

I also think that the default theme should be impressive looking and easy to read. Why NOT have it good enough that people actually use it? I’d model the look and feel after the excellent themes at ElegantThemes or StudioPress. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) include all the plugins that they do, but something like the look and feel of those themes would be awesome for showing how good WP can look and how its way more than just a simple blogging system.

Oh, and some basic SEO features should be built in as well. I’m not saying to have a bunch of options, but simply implement best-practice for things like building the meta description… use category and tag descriptions and/or post excerpts, etc. where appropriate.

Happy holidays everyone!

I’d love to see something like Carrington or Elastic in 2010.

The CMS/Blog/Magazine and standard functions issue may be solved with an advanced download selector on the www.remarpro.com website. I’d imagine that the “download selector” would let you choose what theme, plugins, etc. you want included with your download package. This way you could build your wordpress install to be a a blog, CMS, or anywhere in-between. It could go as far as letting you select versions with or without documentation or compressed code (:

Happy New Year!

For me the most important thing is a clear flow of code. Keep it simple with as few ids and classes as you can use. The theme should come with several css files to demonstrate styling without changing the DOM.

The default theme should use the basics, ajax comments at least but the code it generates should be fantastic.

I’ve created a working example of the kind of Theme I might like to see for a WordPress Default Theme—just for fun. I’ve written up my thoughts in a blog post titled An Idea for a New Default Theme for WordPress—Introducing Kirby.

I think the default theme should support BuddyPress, since it will eventually be available on single WP installs.

I personally would love to see the default theme staying simple and using all the default settings that WordPress can use (eg widget sidebar etc). Also keeping all the code quick, clean, simple and commented very well. I know in my begging days with WordPress the Kubrick theme offered lots of help on learning how a theme was designed so that I could work on making my own.
I dont think the default theme needs to be bloated, but rather streamlined and commented well so once installed it will perform well no matter if the person is on a shared server or a dedicated server for their blog alone. And the comments would assist the people new to WordPress with creating their own theme once they get comfortable enough.
Really all the bloat is not needed, all the extra features are not either. Chances are the experienced people that are saying to include all this already have a custom theme, with a handful of plugins doing what they need. So why not keep it simple and clean?

I’m all for moving forward but can you imagine if we ended up like Joomla were you have to have a degree in php and computer physics just to use the default theme?

Thanks to everyone who weighed in. Matt Thomas and Matt Mullenweg are now working on the new default theme, which I think will be awesome!