Best WordPress Starter Themes for Developers in 2022

Many WordPress themes come ready-made, styled, and packed with all the necessary features required to build a website. No one has to start from scratch. All one has to do is install, customize, publish, and launch. They are ideal for those without coding knowledge. These are known as parent themes. 

But some themes are very basic. They only have the bare minimum amount of code and have little or no styling. Some offer basic design, layout or no layout at all. These are called starter themes. They offer skeleton code you need to build your project.  

WordPress starter themes are perfect for developers or designers with programming experience who don’t want to build a theme or website from scratch. They significantly reduce development time. They can add their own code and customize it to their own particular style and specifications. 

In this post we’ll look at some WordPress starter themes that are available on ThemeForest. 

Best WordPress Starter Themes 

1. Buntington – Education WP Theme

Buntington2 is a WordPress starter theme suitable for education or non-profit built on underscore starter theme and can be customized using SiteOrigin page builder and Kirki customizer.

The theme is fully responsive and comes one-click demo installs that include course, events, and gallery plugins, databases and widgets. It also includes theme options, over two thousand icons, Google Fonts, and child theme. It supports MailChimp, Contact Form 7, and it’s also NavXT compliant. 

2. Vmagazine – Multi-Concept News WordPress Theme

VMagazine comes with unlimited color options, over fifty well-designed magazine post blocks, twenty two widgets, magazine layouts, multiple blog layouts, built-in mega menu. You can use Elementor to customize your magazine, blog, or newspaper to suit your creative style. There are ten beautifully-designed starter websites to choose from.

The theme is translation ready and supports RTL oriented languages. It works seamlessly on mobile devices and across all modern browsers. It is fully compatible with WooCommerce and is also GDPR compliant. 

3. TheSaaS X – Responsive SaaS, Startup & Business WordPress Theme

This responsive, Bootstrap powered theme is perfect for landing pages. It includes a huge collection of plugins and UI components, landing page samples, over a hundred blocks variations. It is compatible with Gutenberg and WPBakery Page Builder. 

4. Swing – Resort and Hotel WordPress Theme

This beautiful theme is ideal for hospitality industry and includes five starter websites perfect for building stunning hotel and resort websites. It comes with customizable room pages, photo gallery, booking system, video slider, Revolution Slider, WP Mega Menu Pro, AccessPress Social Pro, and more. It is WooCommerce compatible, supports multiple currencies, and users can easily manage pricing and seasonal rates. 

5. Sonata – Elegant Multi-purpose WordPress Theme

Sonata gives you the barebones and features needed to create dynamic websites. These include: page templates, topbar themes, navigation themes, header and footer layouts, unlimited colors, animations, icons, Revolution Slider, Contact form 7 and more. The theme is WooCommerce ready, fully responsive, and cross-browser compatible. 

6. Vellum – Responsive WordPress Theme

Vellum boasts of being “a thousand themes in one” and you can use it to create any design, layout, or style. This responsive, SEO optimized theme supports audio and video. It comes packed with unlimited choices of homepages, headers, footers, colors, layouts, and blank page templates to help you create any kind of website. 

It also includes blog templates, demo content, parallax backgrounds, UberMenu, Slider Revolution, WPBakery Page Builder. 

7. Techland – Saas Startup Technology Marketing Agency WordPress Theme

Techland is a comprehensive starter theme that is perfect for technology services websites. Whatever tools you need to build a modern, engaging website that features your services and convert visitors to customers, this theme has them all. Checkout the preview to learn more. 

8. Winger – Aviation & Flight School WordPress Theme

Winger is suitable for websites specialized in aviation industry training. The theme comes with six homepage styles, news and gallery layouts so you can display your pilot courses and certifactions. It also contact forms and is fully compatible with WooCommerce. It uses Elementor for customization. 

9. Starter | Business One-Page WordPress Theme

Starter is WordPress starter theme that includes homepages, inner pages, unlimited galleries, unlimited colors, over fifteen header variations, one-click importer, demo pages, masonry blog, lazy loading for lists and galleries, social icons and more. It’s SEO ready, translation ready, and supports WooCommerce. 

Free Starter Themes for WordPress

If your budget doesn’t allow for a premium starter theme, or you simply want to have a feel of what is it like to work with starter themes, here are five great free WordPress starter themes to consider.

10. Starter Templates — Elementor, Gutenberg & Beaver Builder Templates

This starter template comes with over three hundred pre-made full website templates and individual pages that you can customize with your favorite page builder such as Elementor, Beaver Builder and the Block Editor. Simply select the demo that suits your needs, import, customize and launch. 

11. Directory Starter

This is a lightweight, fully responsive WordPress starter theme for directory websites. You customize it directly or use it to create your own child themes.

12. C9 Starter 

C9 Starter is a WordPress starter theme for creative agencies and content creators. It has mobile-friendly design, a single level dropdown menu, Gutenberg block patterns, and custom pagination.

13. Blog Starter 

Blog Starter is the perfect starter theme that comes with all features needed to build a vibrant personal blogs or magazine type blogs. The blogis is fully controlled and accessed from WordPress customizer. It is WooCommerce ready. 

14. Byvex WooCommerce Starter

This lightweight starter WordPress theme built on top of Bootstrap. You can use it to build any type of website. 

Conclusion

We have just looked at a great selection of WordPress starter themes available on ThemeForest, plus some free theme alternatives. They are perfect for developers and designers who have programming experience. 

There are many factors to consider when choosing a starter theme. Some developers prefer starter themes that are completely blank, barebones only and no extras. Others prefer starters that come with extras like pre-built designs and layouts or advanced features like animations, effects, and so on.

We recommend that you choose a WordPress starter theme that follows WordPress best practices guidelines for developing themes. These help you avoid compatibility and security issues.