I’m a developer (full-stack with inclination for backend). Although in professional environment I can work with complex tools, my passion is for simplistic design. I’m thinking of creating my own blog, and would like to have a simplistic one, with some tech-y vibe. I’m looking for a free theme, it one exists, before I start working on it myself. I worked a lot with WP, and I’m not looking for block theme, but instead classic one.
As inspiration I found this: [https://leonbubova.github.io/](https://leonbubova.github.io/), and of course the family of mfwebsites – of which I like this one: [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/) . Now I can design something similar on my own, but I’m not the best designer, and it also takes time.
Requirements:
– As little CSS as possible. In fact – as little code as possible – there is no reason (for my use case) to have 1000 lines in functions.php and other required files.
– As little dependencies as possible – JS without jQuery would be amazing – I found so many themes that still use jQuery. In fact, except the next point, I don’t need JS.
– It contradicts the second point of little dependencies, but it’s a must-have – code-blocks with highlighting (doesn’t have to be a lot of it, just to be readable enough), preferably with the ability to do proper indentation.
If you have an idea for a free theme that is at least close enough to this, I can work on it, but it would be nice to work on an existing base.
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If you want to go full simple for a blog WordPress is a great choice.
The good news is you can have everything you’re asking for with two basic additions to an out-of-the-box installation.
After you install WordPress and setup your account
Themes:
Choose Appearance from the sidebar in the Dashboard and click Themes. Then click “”Add New Theme.” That will bring up the free built-in Theme directory. That will give you access to 6324 free themes, minus the handful of (not terribly useful) “Block” themes. So *at least* 6000 off-the-shelf “classic” themes.
The good news is that almost all those “classic” WordPress themes are completely interchangeable. Hover over a theme you think looks interesting, click “Preview” to see if it looks good to you, and then click “Install.” Generally, with the exception of FSE themes, you’ll only need to update the logo. The rest of your content (including menus and footer widgets) will *generally* be preserved.
Editor:
If you’re just planning a minimalist blog the Gutenberg “block” editor, like all page builders, is a clumsy step backwards for blogging. There’s a reason word processors, email programs, phone apps, and social media sites *don’t* use blocks. (Imagine having to use InDesign, Figma, VisualBasic, or other block-style editors to write email!) It’s the same for blogging, which should be more like writing email than building a multi-column, multi-form homepage.
So the one other change you’ll probably want to make is to add the Classic Editor plugin. That way you can write blog posts like writing email: click “new +” type a subject, type your body text, drag an image or paste a video URL, then click a category checkbox or type some (hash)tags and… click “Publish.”
Out of the box WordPress uses the blog index as the home page so if all you want to do is blog then you literally don’t have to do anything else. Pick and lightly configure a free Classic theme, install the Classic Editor plugin, and start posting.
Note: seriously, just start out doing that. So many people spend time futzing around with look and feel and never get around to actually getting a posting rhythm going. Once you start seriously blogging (after 10-50 posts) you’ll have a very good idea how you want your site to look, what additional pages you want to add, what additional bells and whistles, and (most importantly) whether blogging is something you really want to do. Starting with out-of-the-box WordPress is a great way to figure that out without wasting too much development time.
Bottom line: some companies ban PowerPoint because people spend so much time picking the exact right font, colors, etc., as a way of procratinating and/or instead of admitting they have nothing to say. Worrying about themes, styles, and widgets is the blogging equivalent. Pick any theme, start with the Classic Editor, and you can be blogging 20 minutes after you create your hosting account.