Hijinks: A Developer’s Blank WordPress Theme
Regular Hijinks is no longer available and has now become, Super Hijinksified!
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Thanks for the great gift ! Starting all new project with a clean basis is important. Maybe it can be improved with some xhtml 5 semantic layout in the future.
Anyway the custom search form with javascript text remove on click is a very usefull thing
No problem, let me know what you think of it
I was looking for a wordpress framework yesterday and none satisfied me. May be build my own starter theme like you, anyway I will take a look at your framework today. Thanks
Like I told you last night I was waiting for the release of this and was pretty excited for it. I am currently at work though =[ so when I get home I will be downloading and taking a look. Awesome job and look forward to putting this to good use!
Great, let me know how it works for you
I’ve been meaning to create my own set of “base” WordPress theme files. Thanks for sharing! It’s always helpful to get a glimpse of others’ workflow and processes.
Just about to code a wordpress template so will use your starting framework and see how I get on
Thanks
Whoa, how awesome! That’s an awesome freebie to offer, thanks Amber!
Thanks a lot Amber
i think it will be very helpful for me ’cause i’m starting to develop themes, plugins, etc. for WP.
No problem!
Thanks! Merry Christmas to you too!
thanks Amber, really valuable share for me.
do you think timthumb is still needed after add_theme_support(‘post-thumbnails’)? and I think in header.php wp_list_pages should be replaced by wp_nav_menu ?
No, wp_nav_menu only needs to be used if a custom menu that wp_list_pages can’t do. Remember, wp_nav_menu does NOT move over easily, and has to be manually redone when move the site, so I try to avoid it if possible.
You can use add_theme_support, but I personally prefer timthumb. Plus, it’s not version specific.
I like the theme but wish the sidebar and menu stuff was still there. Anyone know of another good clean theme with the sidebar and menu enabled?
I’m not sure what you mean. The sidebar is there and enabled, and menus is enabled in functions.
Thanks a lot Amber, for sharing this! It will be very helpful!
Hi
Thanks for making this available to dl.
I have dl HiJINKS but haven’t looked at it yet!
I am trying to get to grips with WordPress & hope checking out frameworks/themes etc will help!
Hope I can look at it soon!
Thanks & best wishes
Just taken a quick look at hijinks (or is it Studiolo?).
A bit of a shock surprise!
Very much a blank canvas to work on then…
It will be good when it grows up!
Thought I might see more Twenty Ten type coding and semantic html5.
I wonder what I can make of this? Quite challenging!
Anyway all very interesting and helpful -again many thanks!
The twenty ten theme was filled with a lot of bloated, terrible code which is why I made my own blank theme, hijenks. This theme isn’t meant to be use on it’s own, it’s a starting framework to build upon.
Html5 wasn’t used because of IE and I disapprove of browser hacks, so I’ve used semantic XHTML.
Thanks for sharing Amber! Always interesting to see how other WordPress developers work.
Thanks !
What about adding a preview of the theme ?
Hi Leo,
There really isn’t a preview because it’s a blank framework, meant to start you off with some common functions and clean code.
Very handy. I was also looking for good starting themes and was disappointed by what I encountered so far. Most still contain a lot of bloat. Before TwentyTen I used to start with Kubrick and remove everything I didn’t need. But with TwentyTen it’s such a gigantic pile of code, removing anything involves too much work. There’s just so much going on there it’s difficult to figure out. And I am an experienced programmer.
I can see how a theme like Twentyten is handy for beginners who want to be able to switch a header image or color without diving into any code. However, for people developing with WP there should be a base theme completely clean of any bloat. Things like “I want to be able to switch header images” or “I want to show the latest comments in the sidebar” etc should just be added one by one if needed.
Anyway, thanks for providing this.
Well I hope you enjoy it! This is the same theme I start from with every WordPress site I do
Very thoughtfully done. I like your style:)
I was surprised they allowed the Twenty ten theme as a default with a css file like that; I believe it is the worst one I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for your generosity.
No problem
And I agree with you, the code for TwentyTen all around was terrible
Love the theme/framework! Thank you ever so much. Now I start my every project on hijinks! It really is all you need and nothing you don`t!
)
Thanks for enjoying it!
Wow, thanks for this! Being a newbie developer, your blog is the first place I come to when I’m looking for advice, and I didn’t expect to find something like this having only just this second installed WP, so… thanks again!
Thanks, hope you enjoy it!
Thanks for sharing. I’d been working on my own version of a base WordPress theme to use when starting new projects. This is the type of thing I was shooting for, very clean, without a bunch of stuff to have to remove as you go (clean slate).
Out of curiosity, why did you choose to not include some of the blog features that you’d find in the loop.php file of the twenty-ten theme? I know that theme is quite bloated, but I find myself going back to it at times to grab things like the built in page navigation and posted_in/posted_on kind of info? Thanks!
Honestly, a lot of those blog features aren’t used (at least by my clients, who use WP more for a CMS than blog) so I took them out because I got tired of deleting them each time or they’re used but in different orders, so I left the loops blank so you can roll your own. If you find that you do use them you can always save it into the theme and copy/paste a fresh copy of the theme each time you start a new site (versus redownloading it each time)
Yep, can always add it back in there. Was just curious why you chose to strip it out and that makes total sense. Thanks
Hey Amber –
I’ve installed this theme on a local WordPress I’m hosting to play around with. The only thing that comes up is an “About” link – the rest is white with no other content or design.
Any help?
Hi Adam,
This is correct. This theme is not an install and go theme – it’s a blank theme for developers, which basically gives a good starting place and framework for a custom theme design.
I figured that but just wanted to make verify that.
Until I get more into WordPress I might try sticking to other frameworks for now, then see if I can’t delve into this later.
Thanks!
Thanks for the clean theme. I’m developing a very simple site and wanted to explore some blank themes. I started with the Whiteboard Framework, but that was way too complex for what I needed…I found I was deleting most of the features! Yours fit the bill perfectly!
Thanks Stephen! Hope you enjoy and please let me know if you have any feedback on it
Oh…hell yeah! This is great! Thank you Amber for sharing this.
Thank you for supporting it!
Thank You! I was looking for a stripped down framework and this is perfect.
I don’t see any pagination code.
At least “archive.php” deserves it
Right..?
This is a stripped down framework, so it’s up to you to add in some of the functionality. I removed the pagination, because most people use WP Page Navi instead, and it requires different code
Yeah right.
This is so awesome! Thanks for the release – I’ll be sure to play around with it A LOT!
I really appreciate it :]
Let me know how you like it
Hi Amber,
Thanks a lot for this, I’m using Hijinks for my new WP website and it’ really helpfull !
I do have a tiny bug thought, in search.php. When I make a search and there are results, the “Sorry we didn’t find anything” part shows. Any idea to fix this?
Thanks !
Hi Mylene!
Sorry about that! I’ve just uploaded version 2.4, the bug should be fixed now
Yay, thank you
I will give this one a spin. I had been using a blank template I believe Chris Collier put out but this one looks more current. Thanks!
This thing really is scaled down, Which is kind of nice. Although in index.php I would have kept at least the_content() and the_title in the loop. If you wanted to go for minimal look you could have did what twentyten did and use a include (or function, can’t remember) for the loop. I usually use “Blank Theme” by Chris Coyier for the backbone of my themes, but I do find myself removing some things from that framework as well. I will try this one out for my next project, Thanks for the other option.
I removed those because a lot of the times, they’re changed or moved around and since they’re such short functions, I figured it would be easy to add back in
I agree, short and sweet
ahh, this is great!
Always on the lookout for a great blank canvas, thanks Amber.
This is great!! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much!
Thanks for this. I am brand new to WordPress and pretty much a novice at PHP. One thing I would like to remove is the Page Title that appears in the content of each page. I would prefer to add this in myself. Not sure where its being grabbed from. How can I remove this?
Thanks.
Hi Andrew!
Are you talking about the h2 title, or the title tag that shows in the browser window?
Ok, Amber…I’m gonna give your blank theme a go.
My first WordPress attempt was customized using Starkers. This will be my second WordPress theme attempt (total newbie here).
Thanks for making your blank theme available.
Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions
Hello Amber,
Thank you for your generosity!
Do you happen to have a code example I could adapt to this theme that would display top and bottom background image at 100% page width but the main area still centered at a fixed width (similar to the concept of your site)?
Thanks, Ross.
There are two ways to do this:
1. Use CSS3 multiple backgrounds on the body tag (which if I remember, is what I did)
2. Use a container div to center the middle elements between the header and footer, then use the container inside the header and footer to center the content (but all the bkg to stretch)