Using Underscores as Your Starter Theme

Written by Jean Galea
Written by Jean Galea

Have you heard of Underscores? It's one of the best starter themes for WordPress.

Here are some resources you should check, start out your week by learning more about this very useful theme.

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Have you heard of Underscores? It’s one of the best starter themes for WordPress.

Here are some resources you should check, start out your week by learning more about this very useful theme:

Here are some features of Underscores:
  • A just right amount of lean, well-commented, modern, HTML5 templates.
  • A helpful 404 template.
  • A sample custom header implementation in inc/custom-header.php that can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php and adding the code snippet found the comments of inc/custom-header.php to your header.php template.
  • Custom template tags in inc/template-tags that keep your templates clean and neat and prevent code duplication.
  • Sample theme options in /inc/theme-options/ that can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php.
  • Some small tweaks in /inc/tweaks.php that can improve your theming experience. They can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php.
  • Keyboard navigation for image attachment templates. The script can be found in js/keyboard-navigation.js. It’s enqueued in functions.php.
  • A script at js/small-menu.js that makes your menu a toggled dropdown on small screens (like your phone), ready for CSS artistry. It’s enqueued in functions.php.
  • 5 sample CSS layouts in /layouts: Two sidebars on the left, two sidebars on the right, a sidebar on either side of your content, and two-column layouts with sidebars on either side.
  • Smartly organized starter CSS in style.css that will help you to quickly get your design off the ground.
  • The GPL license in license.txt. 🙂 Use it to make something cool.

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Written by Jean Galea
Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

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2 Responses

  1. Thank you for posting this, I recently found out about Underscores and I definitely want to dive in and customize it, so your article is a valuable resource!

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