Understanding WordPress Starter Themes

WordPress Starter Themes are important for custom WordPress web development. Above all, they put developer experience first and challenge the status quo of best practices. We discuss the differences between a developer starter theme and a multi-purpose theme, and why using a starter theme can give you a big head start in your custom theme development to achieve better results.
Highlights
0:00 Intro
2:44 Multipurpose vs. Starter Themes
5:21 Benefits of Starter Themes
8:34 Approaches to Starter Themes
16:03 Popular Starter Themes
17:44 What makes a good Starter Theme?
20:40 The future of themes
24:13 Why we build Flynt
26:52 Gutenberg redefined themes
31:06 Challenging the status quo
33:37 Better developer experiences
Links
Flynt WordPress Starter Theme: flyntwp.com/
underscores: underscores.me/
Sage: roots.io/sage/
Episode w/ Jared Novack (Timber): • Enterprise-level WordP...
Popular Starter Themes: github.com/topics/wordpress-s...
Episode about Gutenberg: • Gutenberg's fatal flaw...
WordPress block hydration experiments: github.com/WordPress/block-hy...

[@manosmenexis3160]

As someone that used premium/multipurpose themes in the beginning, then transitioned in custom theme development and finally created a starter theme for myself, before moving to Flynt, my conclusion was that usually premium/multipurpose themes try to satisfy so many different use cases that they end up bloated and confusing to work with as a developer. They might be more user friendly for someone that want a quick website, but at the same time I think there are better options fot those people right now (WIX or Squarespace for example). I would love to see WordPress take into account more the dev experience as you mentioned and I feel like starter themes aren't going anywhere any time soon, as they serve a completely different market in my opinion. Using the latest Flynt recently, it felt a lot like a really mature, modern and thought out way to develop WordPress websites while delivering a great DX at the same time. Great content as always keep it coming!! 🥳

[@user-hl4ok8yi8p]

I am using understrap and storefront for shops, both with a child theme

[@jano12330]

How can I introduce tailwind into flynt?

[@siegfried-deploy]

You should be able to follow the instructions on tailwindcss.com/docs/installation/using-postcss pretty straight forward.
Install tailwindcss and add it to the vite.config.js where you already find the autoprefixer plugin.
Then create a tailwind.config.js, and add all html, js, twig and php files to the content property. The rest should be just like in any tailwind project.
Does that help you?

[@groovebird812]

Hi, can i use Flynt also with the non pro version of ACF?

[@siegfried-deploy]

Flynt makes heavy use of the Flexible Content Field and Option Page features which are only available in ACF Pro. So while you could make it work, you only get the full experience with ACF Pro.