A completely plaintext WordPress Theme

WordPress · 4 comments · 200 words · Viewed ~866 times.

This is a silly idea. But it works. I saw Dan Q wondering about plaintext WordPress themes - so I made one.

This is what this blog looks like using it:

Screenshot showing my blog rendered just as text.

The Code

You only need two files. An index.php and a style.css. The CSS file can be empty, but it needs to exist - otherwise WordPress won't let you activate the theme.

The index file displays the requested post, or front page, in plain text. It isn't the most sophisticated code I've ever written!

 PHPheader('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8'); 
bloginfo( 'name' );
echo "\n\n";

if ( have_posts() ) {

    while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

        if ( get_post_type() == 'post' ) {
            the_time( get_option( 'date_format' ) ); 
            echo "\n";
        }

        the_title();
        echo "\n";
        echo strip_tags( apply_filters( 'the_content', get_the_content() ) ); 
        echo "\n\n\n";
    endwhile; 
}

Obviously, there are no links - so you can't navigate. There are no images - but there's also no alt text. There are no embeds, scripts, styles, or other fancy things. Just plain text.

Enjoy!

4 thoughts on “A completely plaintext WordPress Theme”

2024-05-09 13:19

Dan Q said on danq.me:

Terence Eden took my idea for a completely plain text blog, ran with it, and just kept running. Now it's a WordPress theme!

Reply | Reply to original comment on danq.me
2024-05-09 13:59

Daniel Pavey said on toot.community:

@Edent love it! nice ❤️

Reply | Reply to original comment on toot.community
2024-06-18 19:07

Salvatore Zummo said on www.univocal.co:

Some weeks ago my attention was caught by an interesting and strikingly original feat accomplished by Terence Eden with a blog post titled “A completely plaintext Wordpress theme”: In short, the author was able to condense the basic output of a Wordpress classic theme in less than 15 lines of ...

Reply | Reply to original comment on www.univocal.co
2025-02-19 11:59

Dan Q said on danq.me:

Andy Hawthorne criticised a new website owner for not using a popular CMS, arguing that this would necessarily impact their SEO and so invalidate the point of their website (that point being, Andy presupposes, to attract views). I dispute... almost every single part of that argument.

Reply | Reply to original comment on danq.me
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