I built my first base theme in 2016 using _s (also known as Underscores) and rebuilt the theme this year to be fully Gutenberg-compatible. My original theme used conventions I’d developed during several years working as a developer in agency settings. In rebuilding the theme I incorporated some significant non-Gutenberg-related changes and learned a lot about reasonable Gutenberg defaults.
This talk will cover the changes to my base theme that Gutenberg required, the process I went through to rebuild, and the reasoning behind the architectural changes I made to the theme that are not tied to Gutenberg. We’ll also talk about how I intend to iterate on this theme and add improvements over time.
You might ask: but what is a base theme? A base theme, also known as a starter theme, is a bare-bones theme that includes default templates and very basic styling that is intended to be hacked and transformed into a fully custom theme. Using base/starter themes are often the next step in the learning process for a developer who has been modifying themes by using child themes.
This talk is for anyone who wants to build (or rebuild) their own base theme for use in building custom WordPress themes.