Hey Folks,
Am building some really custom sites (basic grid though) in wordpress. Are there any base themes that are good to use as a foundation to develop custom themes? I know there are quite a few out there and was just curious if there were any that were made specially for foundational purposes.
The most popular one I know of is Thesis. It's not free, but I believe it's worth it. http://diythemes.com/
twentyten(the theme packaged with wordpress 3.0) Is great for this. You can learn a lot just from reading the comments in the code, and it has lots of features that you can customize for your own use. Carrington jam is another that that I have seen used.
Thematic in my experience is unmatched as a base theme. I would recommend that. It already has bits of grid systems incorporated such as 960.gs and blueprint css... However, it does require an intermediate to advanced level of wordpress theming knowledge. I use it exclusively to build themes as it's so easy to override portions and is very seo friendly.