15 Best WordPress Theme Frameworks

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) that power some of the best websites on the Internet. Even the website with millions of visitors is powered with the help of WordPress. One of the best things about WordPress is that designing websites with the help of this CMS is quite easy. With the help of themes, you can develop the website as per your liking with even a simple basic knowledge of website development. There are various types of themes available out of which a majority are free and in case of others you need to pay a small fee. There are a large number of themes that can help develop websites that embodies a large number of styles that can help you provide a better user experience to the users. In some of the cases, the users may want to develop some themes with some additional features that are not available in the existing themes. There are three major ways in which you can develop the themes as per your liking.

WordPress theme development with the help of the theme frameworks is quite a simple and faster task. The theme framework provides basic architecture and adds some extra functionalities to the theme development process. There are various WordPress theme frameworks which can be used for free or with a small payment. The frameworks differ in the features that it offers to its developers. The theme frameworks contain the core code that contains the basic features and design elements. Apart from these, there are certain plugins and extensions that can help you to add some additional features to your theme.

WordPress Theme Frameworks provides a number of benefits to their developers. One of the best parts of this is that you can quite easily choose the option to switch themes without losing any access to the core features and the functionality of their website. It can help the website owners to change the look and feel of your website without losing access to the core features and functionality of their website. If the theme is developed using same theme framework, the website owners can keep their keep their settings, options, and other configuration choices thereby making the migration quite easier. Apart from these, different theme frameworks have good support communities where you can seek answers for any problems encountered.

Here are some of the best WordPress theme frameworks that can help you to choose the best framework for your theme.

Gantry:

Gantry is a popular theme framework developed by RocketTheme. One of the best thing about this framework is that it can be quite easily used for free. It can be used to develop themes for WordPress, Joomla, and Grav. It consists of 5 powerful and easy to use layout manager with a visual interface that can help even the less-experienced developers that can help create very impressive themes even with little technical knowledge. Here you can add unlimited undo that can help ensure that you can design the website as per your liking. The websites developed using the Gantry framework is fast, lightweight, megamenu support, SCSS/LESS support, and other such features. There are a number of built-in fields that includes color pickers, icon, and font pickers that can help in making beautiful websites. The developers can use 38 different design layouts and 65 widget areas to make the website as per your liking that is responsive and visually attractive theme. It also features an Ajax Admin that helps in developing backend that is lightning fast.

It has a number of users that can help you to develop a website and get help in case you come across any problems. Apart from these, it is properly documented where you can get instant help in case of any problems. One of the best things about Gantry is that it can be used for free.

Roots:

Roots is a free Open-source tool that can help in the development of better WordPress applications. It makes use of a broad and unique approach and provides three distinct and inter-related products.

One of the best thing about this is that it takes care of everything about WordPress development. It also offers an end-to-end product lineup. It offers a very broad and a unique approach to the theme development. WordPress development using Roots may turn out to be tricky and in some cases, you may encounter some errors. To overcome this Roots offers Trellis that is a self-contained WordPress development environment along with virtual machine and WordPress server. Apart from these, Roots also provides a WordPress boilerplate known as Bedrock that forms the basis of streamlined and hassle-free development. The boilerplate takes care of all the dependencies and provides better security from the beginning as it limits access to non-web files and secure passwords. It also comes embedded with Sage that is a starter theme which forms a foundation for a visually appealing and highly functional theme. It also features Bootstrap as the front-end package management with the help of Bower and JavaScript support. It can be used for free, but in order to get help for development, you need to pay a small fee.

Beans:

Beans is a theme framework that is freely available and can be used by WordPress developers to develop simple and amazing themes. Beans can also be used as a foundation for your website theme. There are also certain child themes that are available with this framework. One of the best parts of Beans is that it is quite flexible that it has various features and properties that includes responsive design, search engine friendly structure, faster loading of websites, and easy to follow online documentation. Apart from these, it also provides some amazing resources like Sketch resources and WordPress plugins.

Unyson:

Unyson by the popular ThemeFuse team is a free framework that has various features and components that can be used to create beautiful WordPress themes. It has various essential items that can turn out to be helpful to create your WordPress website as per your convenience.

One of the best parts of Unyson is that it is also available in the form of a plugin that includes drag & drop page builder, backup & demo content, sliders, mega menu, sliders, portfolio, breadcrumbs, drag & drop form builder, is SEO friendly, get feedback, and has calendar and map shortcodes as well.

Hybrid Core:

Hybrid Core is a free WordPress theme framework by ThemeHybrid. One of the best parts of this framework is that it provides complete freedom of development as there is no recommended method of creating themes. You can use any combination of HTML, CSS, JS and other technologies to create a theme. You can also use your own scripts and snippets in theme development process. It also supports smooth translations for both parent and children themes as well. It provides the option of custom layouts and custom post types to offer flexibility in web design. Media can be properly handled with native gallery shortcodes and built-in media grabber that allows you to pull video, audio, and gallery embeds directly from the post content. You can also quite easily get EXIF data, ID3 tags, and other such information with its Media Meta API. Layout API makes it easy for you to register any number of layouts and have them automatically shown in the customizer for user selection. It also features a font loader that allows you to register and enqueue both the Google web fonts and theme bundled fonts.

PageLines:

PageLines is a web development framework that can help to design beautiful and responsive WordPress websites in a faster manner with the real-time drag and drop feature. It also features a point and clicks edit feature. Apart from that, it consists of various extensions which go on increasing day by day which can be used to enhance the functionality of the website. PageLines is perfectly optimized for clean code. Apart from this, it also supports a huge library of fonts, backgrounds and third-party script integration. You can use it for free to create some themes and websites. You can also use the paid versions that include upgrades in the form of pro extensions and support forums.

Underscores:

Underscores by Automattic is a theme development framework that can turn out to be helpful in the development of WordPress themes. It provides a lean starter theme that is responsive. It makes use of HTML5 templates and minimal CSS. The framework is fully responsive and a JavaScript converts the website menu into a toggled dropdown for mobile devices. One of the best parts of this framework is that it is available on GitHub and can be used for free.

Genesis:

Genesis is one of the most widely used and recommended theme development framework and every WordPress theme developer must have come across this framework. It is used by a number of popular websites all over the world. It can be used for a one-time payment of $59.95 or a Pro Plus All-Theme Package of $499.95. It provides a perfect balance between affordability and power. It can help you to develop the website that is lean, secure, SEO friendly, future-proof and highly customizable. The use of latest HTML5 standards helps in making the website responsive. It can quite easily be used with a child theme. It offers a number of customization options for headers, footers, and widgets.

Apart from these, there are a number of top-selling child themes also included in the same as Infinity Pro, Magazine Pro, and Parallax Pro. It can turn out to be quite useful for both the beginners, intermediate and advanced developers. Using this, you can design beautiful websites without the need to go anywhere near any code. One of the best thing about this framework is that the code is robust and highly optimized code. One of the best things about these is that security is embedded in the core of the framework. The regular updates are provided to ensure that any vulnerabilities are patched regularly.

Divi by Elegant Themes:

Divi by Elegant Themes is a multipurpose WordPress theme with a drag-and-drop page builder tool that can help you to create amazing prebuilt page templates. It has a number of features and functionalities which can be used as a framework for a wide range of website projects. One of the best things of this is that you do not need to play with any code to design the website. It can be used for a yearly payment of $89 a year. It allows the users to have access to 87 themes of high quality along with several WordPress plugins. Some of the amazing high-quality plugins that come with Divi are Divi Builder, Bloom email opt-in form, Monarch social sharing tool, and other such plugins like WooCommerce extra product options which can also be used with WooCommerce extensions. One of the best things about these is that the framework consists of a search engine optimized code, and impressive loading times. The Elegant theme framework is a blank canvas that can be used as a foundation for your own custom designs. One of the best thing about this is that there are a large number of users who can support you in developing a beautiful website and fix any problems if encountered. Another amazing thing about this is that it is properly documented so that you can quite easily design the website without any external help.

Thesis:

Thesis by DIYthemes is a good theme development framework. It features some well-known features that help to make the website attractive and functional. Skins is the design control component of the framework that helps to provide more comprehensive control over the design process. Its Boxes feature integrate various functionalities into the website without the need to install plugins. It also provides a drag-and-drop Box that can be used to add functionality to your website. This framework also takes care of the performance and optimization of the website with the help of its certain web tools. You can use it for $87 for a basic version, $164 basic plus version and $197 professional version.

iThemes Builder:

iThemes Builder is a theme development framework that is used to develop beautiful and responsive WordPress sites quickly and easily. One of the best things of the same is that it provides you the option to create your own custom layouts. The modular approach of layout editor covers header, images, navigation, content area, widget bars, HTML areas, and a footer. Its style manager helps you to change different items of your theme without the need to get into the coding part. Blocks can help you to add some special functionality to your website as it lets you to create custom events and calendars.

You can buy the basic Foundation pack for $80, Developer pack for $150 and All Access Pass for $197.

Themify:

Themify framework is another WordPress theme framework by the Themify team. This framework includes the Themify Builder which can help you to create custom page layouts. These page layouts can help you to populate them with various page elements and modules with a drag and drop interface which can be also be applied to the posts as well. Apart from these, there are various widgets that can be added to your page layouts. One amazing part of this is that the layouts created with the builder with a grid layout which consists of multiple rows and columns that is responsive and mobile friendly. Another best part of this framework is the styling panel that enables the users to easily customize their website without the need to edit any code or templates. You can also apply some shortcodes to insert certain elements in your website. One of the best parts of this is that the users can quite easily export and import the settings from one site to another that helps speed up the website development. You can use it by buying a theme or joining the Themify club at a price of $79, $99, $139, and $349.

Headway:

Headway is a drag-and-drop WordPress development layout design process. One of the best parts of this is that you can customize for your website as per your requirements. This means that anyone from experienced developer to a novice developer could easily implement your ideas into the functional design. It also features a Visual Editor that can help you to create different types of websites by creating different types of layouts. You can also add custom code with the help of CSS, HTML, or PHP with the help of Live CSS Editor, Custom Code blocks, WordPress hooks, or the Block API. Another best feature of the same is its native rollback system that saves its snapshots on a periodical basis and allows you to revert back in a single click. It can be used at a price of $49.

Ultimatum:

Ultimatum is a theme development framework that can be used to develop `beautiful websites. It comes with a powerful form builder and a range of sliders that can be used to create beautiful posts and image slideshows. One of the best parts of this is that you can use it to design beautiful web stores as it is compatible with WooCommerce. It also features a powerful visual composer that consists of a drag and drop page builder plugin. It can also help you to create custom layouts both for posts and pages that can be used to produce some amazing results. Ultimatum also features custom post type creator that can help you to create your own post types and custom taxonomies that helps you to organize your content effectively. It also comes integrated with Google Fonts and a large selection of icons that can help you to provide a visual appeal to the users. The Basic Plan can be used at $55 whereas the Business Plan can be used at $99.

Jump Start:

Jump Start is a multipurpose WordPress development framework that has not been built with a specific project in mind. One of the best thing about this is that it can be used by both the developers and non-coders. It also contains some website demos in order to help you to make the responsive website in a faster manner. It also features an integrated layout builder tool and a powerful admin control panel that can help you to customize your website. It also features a portfolio plugin that can help you to display your work with the help of unlimited sidebar configurations, social media integration, shortcodes, and retina-ready design. You can use it for a small payment of $89.

Summary:

Theme development framework turns out to be quite helpful for the theme development process as it eases out the process. It also ensures that the theme thus developed is stable and fully functional. Some WordPress core and plugins can help you to add some additional functions to your website.

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