At some point of time, theme developers will have realized that every time you start developing a WordPress theme, you are actually typing the same base code over and over again.
Enter the existence of theme frameworks.
What are Theme Frameworks?
According to WordPress Codex:
"A theme framework is a theme that is designed to be a flexible foundation that can serve as a parent theme for building child themes. The use of WordPress theme frameworks may ease theme development by reducing the volume of work which may be needed in creating a backbone for your theme"
In my personal view, a theme framework is just a clean coded, standards compliant theme, stripped of any unnecessary codes while retaining enough flexibility for expansion and styling.
As with most framework author's, the underlying reason for creating a framework stems from the frustration of re-typing the same base code over and over again. Having a framework would thus cut down the time needed to write the base code and get to work on the functionality immediately.
The Concept of Chile Themes
Theme frameworks make use of WordPress' child theme functionality, a new feature (in WP 2.7) that protects already installed WordPress themes while allowing customization to be built onto it. Customizations are storied separately in the “child” theme. Thus, this have an effect of creating a sandbox around the "parent" Theme.
So for example, if "index.php" was requested and a child theme has only the following files: "archive.php", "style.css" and "functions.php", WordPress will then load "index.php" from the "parent" theme instead.
Current Offerings:
Currently, the more well known frameworks are:
The WordPress Codex lists a few more like the WP Framework.
I am currently a Thematic user, but that's just preference. Most frameworks offer almost the same base functionality, and the only difference is that some frameworks offer extras like built in dropdown menus.
Further thoughts:
That said, theme frameworks are not without their problems.
Being a framework is a benefit as well as a source of problem. As frameworks have to be generic, there is also a certain inflexibility towards it.
In the course of developing my personal website, there were many times when I wanted to insert codes into specific parts of the parent theme but were unable to do so. As such I ended up creating an entire new template file again just to get round it.
Thus, the bottom line: whether or not to use a framework is highly dependent on what kind of website/project you're working on. However, in general, frameworks are a good start to theme development as most of them are already quite well developed.
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