WordPress offers a beautiful platform with unique features for those willing to start their own online business, website, or blog. A simple but very effective way to do that is to customize your WordPress theme.
The WordPress starter themes can make a good example. The best starter theme will be time and effort-saving and a valuable asset to your business exposure.
Especially for beginners, it may seem quite tough to handle all these features that WordPress offers. With the best WordPress starter theme, you will find everything done at ease.
Usually, a WordPress user has to go through many coding to set a good theme for his page. It involves many removing and replacing of the codes that are there by default.
If you are not a programmer, there are high chances that things can turn into a mess. Even if you are a professional programmer or want to start everything from scratch, this process will consume lots of time without a doubt.
That’s why you will need the best WordPress starter theme to help. A WordPress starter theme acts as a shortcut to design and customize your WordPress site or develop your page without any hassle.
What is a WordPress Starter Theme?
A WordPress starter theme or a ‘blank’ theme is a framework for developing your WordPress site or page from the very beginning. It works as a development skeleton.
You can work on building a unique website or page using your creativity. They work differently from other frameworks. Where different WordPress themes have built-in codes for everything, the WordPress starter themes are built with the necessary codes only.
So, you are free to implement any functionality of your choice without worrying about the theme’s working capacity.
Think of a blank canvas. An artist can draw anything and paint the way his heart wants. A WordPress starter theme is just like that. You have no bounds on how or what to design.
Also, you can give life to a masterpiece with less effort and time. It’s because half of the work has already been done for you, and all you need to do is, use the theme files and build a new one.
Benefits of Starter Theme
Starter themes are versatile and very helpful in various ways. Once you start using it, you will discover new reasons every day to stick with it. But some of the main features why you should choose the best WordPress starter theme includes:
- The first and probably the best feature offered by the starter theme is that it includes a built-in code for the essential foundation. This coding is enough to run the theme but nothing excess to limit your creativity to add new foundational functionalities.
- You will find the best insights for the best utilization and practice that is to be followed to create your WordPress website design.
- Another outstanding benefit is that you get all your freedom and flexibility to customize your WordPress theme with the best quality. And all these can happen in the shortest time and work requirement as you can skip programming the code files at the early stage to develop WordPress templates.
However, the rising demand for the best WordPress starter themes has created quite a competition among this type of WordPress theme. One can get puzzled while choosing what is right for him. We have prepared a list of the best WordPress starter themes for your ease.
Factors to Consider Before Choosing the Best WordPress Starter Theme
Choosing the best WordPress starter theme can be tricky. Some things you might consider before selecting a starter theme for you are listed below.
- The best good starter theme should have firm stability.
- The security of any WordPress theme cannot be compromised at all.
- Fast base-level working capacity is something you should look for in your WordPress starter theme. This can help the theme perform faster, including the additional functionalities you are willing to include.
- The core functionality is essential as a WordPress starter theme only includes a few necessary codes to run the theme.
- A good quality starter theme must be SEO friendly.
- Multi-site management is another factor that you might consider before choosing your WordPress starter theme.
13 Best WordPress Starter Themes For Building Dream WordPress Sites
GeneratePress
The SEO-optimized ultra-concise theme is focused on user efficiency and accessibility. The clean code with Vanilla JavaScript has a tiny footprint of less than 10KB and can instantly load web pages. It’s also compatible with most website builders and WordPress plugins. The codebase is designed with good SEO mark-up, and everything is ready for multilingual translation using .po & .mo files.
Key Features
- Fully customizable color schemes and layouts.
- SEO-optimized with schema.org structure.
- Compatible with WCAG 2.0 standards.
- Price: $49.
Astra
This widely popular WordPress starter theme hosts a massive library of creative pixel-perfect templates that are ready to use. You can deploy them to your WordPress website without writing a single line of code. It’s also blazing fast in terms of responsiveness. It is even designed exclusively to support page builders with full freedom and customizability options. You can change everything, including the header, sidebar, layout, colors, and fonts of your website.
Key Features
- Blazing fast loading speeds of 0.5 seconds.
- Vanilla JavaScript used instead of jQuery.
- The overall footprint of less than 50 KB.
- Price: The basic WordPress starter theme is free forever. Extended services with Astra Pro start at &47 per year.
Kadence
The Kadence WordPress theme is the perfect solution for bloggers looking to create an aesthetically pleasing design while also adding more functionality.
Kadence Theme can be easily translated into other languages because it includes a built-in translation service that will automatically convert content to the appropriate language.
The Kadence theme has a variety of custom drag-and-drop options that can be used to create social media buttons, tables, and graphs, highlighting text by color or size and more.
Also, you can build a beautiful design website that is easy for readers to navigate through content. Includes a grid layout with columnists so posts are easily sorted by category or date.
Key Features:
- Fully responsive and Retina ready
- Drag and drop elements for quick customization
- Easy to translate content into different languages
- Best quality pre-built templates
- Fast loading speed with no CLS issue
- Mobile-specific customization
- Price: $69/year for unlimited sites use.
Ultimatum
Featured as a full WordPress suite instead of just a starter theme, Ultimatum is the best solution for beginners in the WordPress realm. The setup requires zero codings whatsoever and offers numerous professional features that are unparalleled in the market. The visual website builder is super-intuitive and easy to use on any device. You can even include custom CSS codes into the backend if you are up for it!
Key Features
- Simple drag-and-drop website builder with add-on and widget support.
- Real-time update of CSS codes on the website.
- Powered by Bootstrap 3 and supports all Boot swatches.
- Price: $49.
WP Bootstrap Starter
Wholly open-source and licensed under the GPL, this popular WordPress starter theme is based on _s, Twitter Bootstrap, and Font awesome. The creators are actively developing and improving the theme under a project after receiving continual user feedback. You can use the visual composer to quickly apply this theme to your WordPress website and customize everything from the sidebars to the containers.
Key Features
- Built using Bootstrap 4.0.0.
- Support for WooCommerce and Contact Form 7.
- Compatible with the Elementor plugin.
- Price: Free to download.
Underscores
Although initially designed for hacking purposes, this WordPress starter theme has some fantastic features to be used as a parent theme. You can transform this theme based on your preferences and tastes using basic CSS knowledge. It’s a bit on the expert side of starter WordPress themes, but the learning curve is quite mellow. You’ll get the hang of it quite soon after just a few tries.
Key Features
- Streamlined templates based on HTML5.
- Specialized tags to prevent code duplication.
- Designed for both computers and smartphone devices.
- Price: Free to download.
Genesis
Suited for extremely sophisticated WordPress website designers and developers, this theme boasts itself as Ready for Gutenberg.
You can deploy all your necessary coding skills to customize this theme’s numerous modules and create a brand-new website. There is also an intuitive one-click setup button to load demo content.
The theme is versatile and potent enough to design simple landing pages for the most complex tree-structured websites.
Key Features
- Pre-made templates and widgets that are easy to edit.
- Fully customizable colors, fonts, and headers with real-time updates.
- Responsive on both mobile screens and computer browsers.
- Price: $59.
Bridge
Versatility is the name of the game with this WordPress starter theme. Whether it’s a business website, a personal portfolio, or even just a hobby showcase, this theme is suitable to fit your needs to the utmost.
There are 24 unique layouts and features spread throughout the 500+ examples in the theme’s library. You can customize every one of those to your heart’s content. The basic theme also comes bundled with some pre-installed plugins!
Key Features
- Support for both Elementor and WPBakery plugins.
- Video tutorial on Qode for customer support.
- Powerful admin interface with WooCommerce compatibility.
- Price: $59.
Enfold
Best suited for portfolio websites, this WordPress starter theme is an absolute charm for flexibility and responsiveness.
You can either modify the color, style, and fonts of the 18 existing layouts or create a new one from scratch using the WordPress Admin Panel.
The dynamic drag-and-drop template builder is super-easy to use. The edits also show up in real-time on your website. Check out the review of the Enfold theme.
Key Features
- Support for WPML Multi-Language plugin.
- Ajax Instants search plugin comes pre-installed.
- Ready for WooCommerce.
- Price: $59.
Thesis
Featured as a more robust and potent alternative to WordPress’s original template, Thesis is all that a theme designer could dream of. Thesis skins are built on a conceptualized idea regarding HTML Boxes that offer valuable assets for any website.
The whole setup is streamlined for blazing-fast responsiveness and utmost efficiency. There is a bit of a learning curve, and it’s worth a shot!
Key Features
- Visual website builder with a sleek interface.
- Support for dynamic CSS codes.
- Intuitive backup and restore options.
- Price: Free to use and included inside Focus WordPress Theme.
CyberChimps
This simple and minimalistic WordPress starter theme is powerful enough to be used as a parent theme. It is based on the Twitter Bootstrap. The customizer preview also supports visible edit links.
Key Features
- Compatible with Gutenberg.
- Extremely responsive even on touch-friendly devices.
- Intuitive drag-and-drop website builder.
- Price: Free to download.
Starter Blog
With full focus on page performance, this minimalistic starter theme is coded with only 55 files. This feat has enabled extreme responsiveness along with multi-dimensional functionality in this theme.
All functions are designed based on a solid back-end Redux framework. There is also built-in support for custom widgets, color schemes, and web fonts.
Key Features
- Fully featured admin panel with powerful tools.
- Ready for WooCommerce.
- Streamlined codes with support for Yoast SEO and Contact Form 7.
- Price: $49.
Starter Business
The ultra-modern sleek appearance and attractive color schemes of this theme make it stand out from the rest. It’s reasonably responsive and has good support for one-page business websites.
There are multiple menu effects, icons, and animated GIFs that you can use to customize the dynamic header portion and texts.
Key Features
- Ready for WooCommerce & WPML.
- Intuitive Media manager.
- One-click import options.
- Price: $59.
Conclusion
A strong base foundation is crucial for every good website. The same thing applies when it comes to building the perfect WordPress theme. Maintaining your page will become more challenging as the page gets broader gradually.
You will not even have to worry about individual themes every time. This will help to make your WordPress journey easy and fun while your website stands at the focus. Make sure you have all the necessary features in your WordPress starter theme, and that’s all!
