Astatic – Free Thematic Child Theme

It’s been a long time since I’ve released a Thematic child theme. This one is called Astatic, and it’s designed to be a very minimalistic WordPress blog theme with posts formatted in two columns on index pages.

If you remember how to install a child theme, you also need to have Thematic uploaded to your /wp-content/themes/ directory, but activate Astatic.

Notes

• I removed several elements through the functions.php file. I could’ve used display: none; to disable them through CSS, but that kinda freaks me out.
• The blog title will show up wrapped in an H1 tag on non-singular pages. On singular pages, the post title uses the H1 tag. This is to keep the SEO crazies happy since I removed the blog description (see above note) which usually handles the H1 stuff.
• The posts on the index pages are styled in two columns on index pages through the .not-singular selector. Credits go to the body_class function.
• Only three files included in the child theme: screenshot.png, functions.php, and style.css. No images are used in the design at all.

I tried to make the code in functions.php pretty well commented so you can hopefully figure out what’s going on there. I may do a follow up post on my development process.

Credits

Every time I make a new Thematic child theme is a learning experience. Here are a few resources I used to help me out:

• ThemeShaper Forums – This place has a wealth of useful info in their archives. Tip: Use a site specific Google search followed by your query (i.e. site:themeshaper.com/forums/ child theme question).
• The Right Way to Override Theme Functions – A nice tutorial on overriding Thematic functions. This information was probably gone over in some post in the Thematic forums (see above) too.
• Useful Thematic Filters – This post has a nice list of useful Thematic filters (like the title would suggest).

There are also a lot of good info on the ThemeShaper blog, particularly through the How To Modify WordPress Themes The Smart Way series.

Conclusion

Hope you all like the design. It all started when I coded this when I was bored, then I decided to turn it into a Thematic child theme.

Most of you who have seen my “designs” know that there are very few images, mostly because I suck at making them in Photoshop. Hence, they are almost always pure CSS.

I know it’s really simple but I’m sure it could come in handy for something. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Monochromatic – A Thematic Child Theme
2. Should Child Themes Be Listed on WordPress.org?
3. Thematic WordPress Theme Review