Sassafrass
I use WordPress a lot. I find it has this perfect balance of being able to develop a project quickly while also having a very easy-to-use user interface in the back-end. This means that anyone can use it to manage the content on their web site, regardless of skill level.
But a lot of the themes and frameworks that were already built for WordPress either didn’t have the features I was looking for or were extremely resource heavy (and thus having a negative impact on performance.)
So I set out to build my own. This was how Sassafrass was born.
Sassafrass is a bare-bones framework made with the developer in mind. It gives you all of the building blocks that you need to get a site up and running a lot quicker but doesn’t require monstrous plugins that destroy a sites performance.
It also comes with a few extras:
- A class library to speed up creating a site using typical design patterns
- It implements SASS and Compass for CSS preprocessing – improving the maintainability of your styles while utilizing this powerful preprocessor
- Implements Responsive Design with Server-side Components techniques – this allows the developer to use the power of the server to create and control the site’s user experience instead of relying on the client.
All in all it is an extremely lightweight yet powerful building block to create awesome WordPress themes and web sites.