"Nimbly" - My WordPress Starter Theme
This open repo contains my WordPress starter theme, which I call "Nimbly." This theme includes many of my standards after 10+ developing/designing websites.
This theme is a bit of an evolution of a gist I wrote about organizing WordPress theme code.
Since the gist, I've added new template_part types called "Segments". Think of Segments like mini content areas within a page. The standard segments that I've included with this theme are:
- Text Segments include a body and title. Depending on the amount of content within the body, it'll be given a class prefix "regular", "long", or "brief". If you're adding both a media segment to the text segment, you can select a "Two Column" content display so the media appear next to the text.
- The Media Segment can include either a media grid, portrait and landscape media item, single media item or slideshow. Available media types include images, PDFs, YouTube videos, and links.
- Callout Segments: Callouts are basically banner elements. You can add a background image and scale them to different sizes.
- Info Box Segments: Info Boxes are the most basic segment type. They just include a title and body, usually under 220 characters (but no character restrictions are imposed).
The goal of this theme is to create a framework that I can incorporate any design into, so you won't find much style code. That said, a developer should have to do minimal work with the theme's HTML/PHP structure and the all the custom fields are integrated into the themes files.
Getting Started
Follow these steps to integrate the theme:
- Install Advanced Custom Fields (version 5+)
- Install & activate the theme.
Styling the Theme
Lots of thought went into the structure in the /styles folder. I'm trying to be explicit, while avoiding redundancy. All SCSS is pulled into style.scss. There you can update the theme name and add any external fonts. You should then move to _variables.scss where all the theme variables are stored. After that, I would jump into any one of the files (they all should be pretty straight forward and most correspond with template parts).
Image Sizes
This theme works with high density pixel displays. You should upload images that are 2500px x 1600px or larger.
Required Plugins
To run the theme properly, you'll need Advanced Custom Fields (version 5+). You also will need a SASS compiler to spit out CSS from the SCSS I've included. I use the SASS Plugin for Coda.
Contributing
The master branch includes the most stable site build. Other branches are feature specific.
I actively update the theme to incorporate stable technology, architecture, and best practices. _s and Sage loosely inspired my theme's' architecture. @mdo's code guide was also an inspiration. I love to follow DRY principles and keep features and elements modular when possible. That said, I also love to keep code explicit and readable.
Issue Reporting and Questions
Issues and questions can be added under this repo's "Issues" tab. You can always send me a message, @bbertucc.
Happy hacking!
-Bb.