WordPress is the most popular CMS platform on the web. Infact, this site is also running on wordpress. Most people who have recently acquired the knowledge of wordpress and Css, would like to go into WordPress theme development. Let me tell you, although HTML and CSS are sufficient to develop wordpress theme but if you want to be a better developer, you should learn some jquery and PHP too, just the basics atleast.

In this post, I will talk about two great frameworks to build wordpress themes. The speciality about the frameworks I am going to mention is that they are suitable for benginners. They do not have a complex architecture and are very easy to work with. This doesn’t mean they lack any functionality.

Whiteboard

Whiteboard is an open source wordpress them framework, which you can use for commercial theme development. It is a decent framework, with minimal no. of file so that you do not get confused. The theme arcitecture is great and you can do all the necessary modifications. There are many other featres, but I am sure you are not bothered about them right now.

Toolbox

This is more of a starter theme than a Framework. Toolbox is the simplest wordpress theme, with nothing extra. The code of this theme is a little more difficult to understand as compared to whiteboard, but this contains lesser no. of elements. So, if you work on a theme using Toolbox your theme will be completed faster as compared to Whiteboard.

The code comments are great in both the themes. But, if you are going to build your first theme. I recommend using Toolbox and then making a quick move to Whiteboard, which won’t take much time.

There are many other better frameworks for WordPress Theme Development like Genesis, Thesis, etc. But, if you start with I am sure that you will either get confused or end up creating something very buggy.