Top 10 Preferred WordPress Theme Development Frameworks

WordPress has become the most used (CMS) Content Management System on the internet. With it’s fast growth and adaptation by millions, WordPress is on everybody’s radar. WordPress give the ability of creating a stunning website to the average joe that has no knowledge in web design, css, html, and other languages. At this point and time there are thousands of free and premium themes on the web. Some theme developers base their living on creating these themes!

As crazy as that sounds, WordPress has opened a new market where developers & designers can acquire income. Some argue that WordPress themes are killing the website design profession. That may be true, however people do realise that when they purchase a theme for $30-$100 any other person can completely replicate them. So now the internet, even thou it’s a humongous place, is becoming flooded with look a like websites. One might ask how do I stay unique? Simple, by using a Theme Development Framework you are giving yourself the ability to create a truly unique design.

Today we have collected some of the best WordPress Frameworks. There are many other frameworks out there, but the following listed below are some of the best! Why are they the best? Thousands of people have downloaded them and are using it for their website/business. If you are ever stuck and in need of guidance, the support forums are present to help you out. So if you want more customization options as well as a unique design, check out the following framework to see if they will fit your needs.

1. Thematic by: Ian Stewart

Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.

Thematic Features

• Perfect to use as-is or as a blank WordPress theme for development
• Fully Search-Engine Optimized
• Extra widget-ready areas (13 in total) and more possible in your Child Theme
• Free and commercially supported Child Themes are available for upgrading the theme
• Includes a sample WordPress Child Theme for rapid development
• A wiki-editable guide to Thematic Customization
• Ready for WordPress plugins like Subscribe to Comments, WP-PageNavi, and Comment-license
• Fully compatible with All-In-One SEO and Platinum SEO plugins
• Multiple, easy to implement, bulletproof layout options for 2, or 3 column designs
• Modular CSS with pre-packaged resets and basic typography
• Dynamic post and body classes make it a hyper-canvas for CSS artists
• Editable footer text—remove the theme credit without harming the theme
• Options for multi-author blogs

2.  Thesis by: Chris Pearson

The Thesis Theme framework is a premium template system for WordPress that is designed to serve as the rock-solid foundation beneath any kind of website. Over 37,534 people rely on the airtight SEO, incredible design flexibility, and lightning-fast loading times that Thesis provides.

Thesis Features

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Faster page load times
• Maximum readability to engage and hold your reader’s attention
• Point-and-click design and font controls

3.  WhiteBoard by: Brian Purkiss

The Whiteboard framework for WordPress is built to speed up the process of designing and developing a WordPress theme. Whiteboard does so by eliminating the time spent on a website’s generic div structure and WordPress’ back-end PHP that is common to all WordPress themes. Whiteboard also includes non-intrusive code designed to improve the overal WordPress theme in many ways, including SEO, speed, usability, and mobility.

WhiteBoard Features

• Completely Free and Open Source
• Speeds up WordPress development time
• Built with Less Framework for aninstant mobile website
• Comes with a minimalist design to use or build off of
• The theme and Less Framework can be easily removed if desired for quick and easy theme development
• Strong and flexible div structure
• Basic styles and classes to speed up theme development
• Lightweight and well-noted
• Built with strong Search Engine Optimization

• More dynamic Classes and IDs than anyother WordPress framework
• Many awesome WordPress features such as manageable menus, background, and header image as well as featured images, several widget areas, and more
• Follows the Web Accessibility Initiative
• HTML5 with graceful degradation
• CSS3 Animations with graceful degradation
• Follows WordPress’ CSS Coding Standards
• Fully Compatible with WordPress 3.0 and up with fallbacks for older versions of WordPress
• Cross browser compatible

4.  OnePress by: PushButton Labs

The OnePress Community theme framework is an integrated website and forum solution for WordPress. It is, simply, a WordPress theme to serve as the foundation and framework for your web site and online community. Leveraging the powerful WordPress and phpBB projects, OnePress provides a set of features focused on helping you build and maintain your site from the inside out. With this set of tools, you can easily run your community and do so with professional presentation.

OnePress Features

• Seamless integration with phpBB, complete with unified login and widgets to display forum posts on site.
• Widgetized WordPress layout with drag and drop interface to quickly build site.
• Professional featured content widgets to display important posts with prominence.
• Easy to use backend enhancements for editing OnePress widget content.
• Highly optimized page rendering process for optimal performance.
• Built with WordPress 2.7 and child themes in mind. Flexible hook system for full theme customization.

5.  Buffet by: Melvin Lee

The Buffet Framework is a theme framework designed not only for the theme developers who will be using the theme actions and filters to create the child themes, but also for the end users who would be able to add and remove what they want. Like most WordPress theme frameworks, the Buffet Framework utlises WordPress actions and filters to allow theme developers to add additional content without editing the templates files using the child theme concept.

Buffet Features

• Search Engine Optimization – includes many SEO features such as breadcrumbs, headings, canonical URLs
• Support for Microformats – compatible with some of the microformats like hAtom, hCardandXOXO
• jQuery Powered – comments form validation, SuperSleight for IE6, Superfishmenus,jBreadcrumb included
• Packaged with CSS Frameworks – comes with 960gs and Blueprint CSS
• Action & Filter Hooks - using the parent-child theme concept (with inline documentation)
• Theme Options – organized in tabs, with features such as custom RSS feed links and custom footer messages
• Theme Extensions – allow end-users to enable/disable features using the extensions feature
• Plugin Compatibility – works with WP-PageNavi, WP-Print, Subscribe to Comments and more
• Localization – fully localized, ready for translation
• Free, Open Source – under the General Public License (GPL) v3

6. Carrington by: Crowd Favorite

Carrington is a theme platform for WordPress from Crowd Favorite. It includes the Carrington Core, a reactive templating engine that makes it easy to create different visual styles for different site areas and content and Carrington Build, an advanced drag and drop page layout system that enables full editorial control for complex pages.

7. Hybrid by: Justin Tadlock

Hybrid is a user-friendly, search-engine optimized parent theme, featuring several custom page templates and multiple widget-ready areas, allowing you to create any type of site you want.

Like WordPress, this theme is completely free and open source. You can use it for your client work or for a blog about your grandchildren. It is continuously being developed and has a community growing around it.

Hybrid Features

• Completely modular — use what features you want.
• Custom-made widgets.
• God-like image thumbnail script.
• Super-intelligent breadcrumb menu.
• And much more.

8. Ashford by: Tim Bedford

Ashford is a CMS framework that enables WordPress to build a web site as well it runs a blog. It is trusted by online pros and coders use to customize, build and grow remarkable web sites. It can build any type of site because it can build any type of page: front, landing, squeeze, slideshow or FAQ. And when you are done, no one will know that it is “just another” WordPress theme.

The Ashford CMS Framework is FREE. It is a “brilliant”, “high-quality” parent theme for a personal or small web site. It has loads of features, but not all are enabled. If your project requires: mobile, mega menus, slideshows or support—consider buying the Pro version.

9. Sandbox by: Scott Wallick

The Sandbox is a powerful tool available for WordPress theme designers and developers. The Sandbox can be easily designed just with CSS, so beginners will feel comfortable not bothering with PHP.

Experienced developers and designers can accomplish almost anything with minimal work, thanks to the rich, semantic markup and profusion of classes dynamically generated by the Sandbox.

10. Ganty

Gantry is an amazing free WordPress theme framework by RocktTheme. Gantry framework is available for WordPress and Joomla. Gantry is highly customizable, you have to install Gantry framework and you can also use free child theme available for Gantry framework. RocketTheme is developer of premium WordPress theme there themes are developed on Gantry framework. You can buy premium themes or use some free theme from RocketTheme for Gantry framework.

Ganty Features

• 960 Grid System
• Stunning Administrator interface
• iPhone and iPod Touch custom theme support
• XML driven and with overrides for unprecedented levels of customization
• Per-menu-item level control over any configuration parameter
• Preset any combination of configuration parameters, and save custom presets
• 65 base module positions. Easily add more!
• 36 possible layout combinations for mainbody and sidebars
• Up to 3 sidebars for a total of 4 column layouts
• Many built-in features such as font-sizer, to-top smooth slider, IE6 warning message, etc.
• Flexible grid layout system for unparalleled control over block sizes