Making a minimal wordpress theme — what’s really essential?

“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s been my dream for the last 6 years to create a minimal Wordpress theme. Is that lame? I dunno, but that’s one of my dreams, to create a theme which has no superfluous parts, as Emerson says. So, what’s the essence of a theme? What are people really trying to do when they blog?

In My mind, people blog to communicate. They want to reach others. That’s mainly it. So why not focus the whole theme on the this? Focus solely on the content, solely on the text.

This is a little post about my thoughts that went into making the theme, the theme behind the theme, so to speak.

1. Stop with the features, really. Enough. Stop.
   One of the things I love about wordpress is how feature robust it is, but that may also be its downside. Do people really want to know all the posts I’ve ever written? Do they want to see all the tags I’ve written about? All the related posts? The date I wrote it, the comments on it, all the other pages on my blog, etceteras.,
2. Make it legible.
   Make it so people can read what you wrote. That’s why they’re there! No crazy backgrounds, or text so small you can’t read it, or text that’s crowded out with all the other unnecessary stuff on the site. Words. That’s all I want to read. That’s all there should be.
3. Make it beautiful.
   Now that there’s the focus is only on the words, make that looks nice. Make it look like you want to stare at it for an hour or more, because now that I’m there and reading your words, at least make it possible for me to enjoy it, too.

Those were the main reasons I started out designing my minimal Wordpress theme — Minimus. Focus the site on the text, and then make that look good. Leave everything else out.

If you’re interested in seeing how the project came out, or you’d like to purchase the theme yourself, you can do so here: Minimus