48 hours theme challenge

I’m kind of sick and tired of all the hassle around theme directory and all the bullshit Theme Review Team have to take. Not even sure are they called Theme Review Team anymore. Anyways I salute all the volunteers who have been reviewing themes. But I mostly admire the team admins who make the decisions. People have been arguing have their decision been right or wrong and all that but let’s put that on hold for a while.

In the end all that hassle is about money. Why not concentrate our energy creating couple of more free, good, solid, simple WordPress theme, shall we. Build a theme for fun, not just an up sell your Pro version like I did 🙂

Let’s build a free, simple WordPress theme for WordPress.org.

Build a theme in 48 hours challenge

For me it takes several months to build a theme. So 48 hours time limit is something that is not set in stone. If it takes longer, then it takes longer. But I seriously try to build a theme in 48 hours. I know I can do a child theme in that time limit but a parent theme is gonna be a tough one.

Some people like simple themes and in order the achieve my goal the theme needs to be super simple. I mean the most simple theme you can’t even imagine.

• No sidebars. I could consider Footer sidebar after launch. Just one column where content can shine.
• Haven’t decided on the Featured image yet.
• No frameworks.
• Probably no Genericons or similar.
• No Google fonts to slow things down. I want the theme be fast as a shark.
• Probably no Javascript files.
• Probably no support for Post Formats.
• No support for dropdown menu. Only first level menu items are supported. Dropdown menus sucks anyway, right.
• There is definitely not going to be fancy “Toggle Mobile” Menu with Hamburger icon. There is no need for that.
• No settings in the Customizer. Other than default settings from Core.
• Support for background and header image could be simple enough.
• Do I need to go on.

Preparations

In order to have realistic change to build a theme in 48 hours I need to prepare myself like an athlete. I need to practice my skills, create a vision what kind of theme I’m building and make mental practices. And when the time comes concentrate all my energy on that mission. I probably use Underscore as a starting point. That’ll give me a head start.

I’ll try to take this challenge in June and divide it in two days and get some sleep in the middle. But if I’m on holiday I might try to do it without sleeping in the middle, that’ll be more fun.

So, who’s up for a challenge? Let me know in the comments or in the Twitter.