I was looking for a suitable website theme for a while. Checked themeforest.net, WordPress theme marketplace and a ton of sites found via Google searches. Could not find anything that jumped out for me.
After spending a good few hours on looking through hundreds of themes, I figured that it’s a waste of my time.
After this realization, I decided to start creating my own theme. This was something I had never done before (I had built static websites before but never a WordPress theme) and would be a good reminder of how to write some HTML and PHP code.
Sorted! My new project – create my own theme for my own website.
The Design
Lately, I have started to fall for minimalism – the less clutter, the better. Same thing for the theme design – I like websites that are clean and simple, with all the unnecessary stuff cut away.
This is where James Clear comes in. I have been a big fan of James for a while. His writing is brilliant, the topics he covers – interesting, and his website is just a joy to look at. Check him out here – www.jamesclear.com.
His website theme is super simple, easy to navigate and focused on the writing. There are no fancy plugins or features you can use, no drop-downs. This is what I would like my website to be based on. I hope you’ll understand James 🙂
Note: Although I am pretty much copying his website, over time my plan is to develop my own spin on it. My hope is that I won’t be a copycat for long.
GitHub
While creating this theme (from scratch), I tried to upload the changes on to this GitHub repository: https://github.com/kristapmon/Simply-Kristaps
Feel free to jump in and contribute.
Download and Theme Installation
You can download theme files directly from here: click here.
Installation is pretty straight forward:
- Extract the contents of the file into wordpress/wp-content/themes folder
- Go to your WordPress admin dashboard, then Appearance –> Themes. Activate the newly added theme – Simply Kristaps.
- Go to your website to check it out.
Keep in mind that I will be updating the theme over time and the changes will be uploaded to GitHub. I will do my best to update the compressed file above but when in doubt – check the version numbers.
References
These are some of the resources I have used to create this theme: