The benefits of using a "starter" theme should not be under-estimated as they provide a means of rapidly producing a standards-compliant, cross-browser theme, where the groundwork has been done before you begin. However, it's important for a theme developer to understand the architecture of a Drupal theme from the ground up.
This recipe is not so much about what features and functionalities a Drupal theme can contain, but instead, what they should contain, as a bare minimum.
In this recipe, we will be building a very basic theme which will contain no CSS styling, HTML resets, or custom regions, but only the bare framework for "themers" who want to develop a theme in its entirety.
For this recipe you will need FTP access to your site and an FTP client if you are not working from localhost.