To facilitate theme development, a starter theme can accelerate the process, especially when time is limited. With a starter theme, development becomes much easier due to the availability of existing frameworks.
Several starter themes are available on Drupal.org, each worth trying. Here are some of them:
Zen
The Zen starter theme is widely used and features excellent online documentation, making it highly beneficial for in-depth learning. It is a flexible, standards-compliant, and semantically correct XHTML theme.
Zen is simple and clean, with an optimized HTML source order that places content before sidebars or the navbar, enhancing accessibility and SEO. Additionally, Zen has received multiple awards, demonstrating its effectiveness as a starter theme.
Framework
Developed by Andre Griffin, Framework serves as a user-friendly starting point for theme development. It provides general placement and formatting for essential Drupal elements and supports one-, two-, and three-column layouts. The CSS file is highly organized, featuring clean and simplified code.
Genesis
Genesis is easy to customize and highly flexible, offering themers endless possibilities. It simplifies the process of building a standards-compliant, accessible theme, making it a better alternative to starting from scratch. Genesis avoids complex logic in templates, includes a conditional styles module, and ensures an SEO-friendly content source order.