Hello, I haven't made any themes for XenForo however I have developed themes for other web software. I was wondering for the theme developers out there, what do you use as your starting point for developing new themes? Do you use the default theme? other themes? a custom framework you made yourself?
Any replies would be fantastic, thanks.
I have made a lot of themes that I have never released, just mostly to mess around and try new stuff with, a handful of customs for people and really I only have one style that I started out with by removing basically all of the style properties and changing tons of default templates to the point where they were basically rewritten and really start from scratch...and I find just starting with the default style and duplicating it and going from there is the best way to rapidly deploy something and update.
Some people I have done stuff for buy paid styles as a base and intended to mod it and then gotten a hold of me and in these cases if what they want is not too much of a deviation from what they bought I will work from there, if they want as many customizations to a paid style as the paid style itself has deviating from the default xenforo style then I start from scratch simply because it will be easier for me to keep track of things when people message me to make changes to their site.
I am sure if I made a framework and took the time to do that I would use it as a base for all my custom stuff after but unless I planned on doing everything off of my own framework it would probably not be worth my time...I like free form.
So with those things said, it really is down to how you like to work and how much you want to invest in another's way of thinking, if you only work on your own sites then it might be worth your time to get into a framework or a style based off a framework, and in that sense even styles that are not based on frameworks would be just fine for you to start with.
If you are getting into the business of making xf themes I would suggest just starting with the default theme or make your own framework so you can concentrate on what you want to do and less on what others are doing so that you can just get used to customizing whats in xenforo by default get as well versed with whats in the box without relying on others changes to do things you want.
I hope my random opinion makes some sort of sense with the way I wrote it.
