Just want to make a quick update regarding what is going on lately and I'm glad to let you know that a WordPress theme framework will be available to the public soon! I estimate that the theme will be available somewhere in January 2012, perhaps around my birthday 
The theme framework is based on the popular 960 CSS grid system and will have by default 36 layout combinations to choose from, and this excluding the homepage.
It is not about re-inventing the reel but it's a natural conclusion I came to after deeply studying all available theme frameworks out there. I see that most of themes out there are having more and more custom (and most of the time not so well written) functions and things like SEO or page speed are put on second place in favor of some marketing for functions that are really no usefull for everyday WordPress user and all of them can be found as plugins if there's a need for them.
Off course, all of them are promoted as SEO ready but when it comes to a deeper check against Google policy and the way of how Google "read" and understand the source code, especially after the Panda update, they all kinda fail the tests.
When it comes to SEO nowadays it's mainly about the content quality and the writer, and this is overlooked in ALL themes out there. This framework will give you advices based on the content you write on each individual post or page and help you get in touch with similar content writers so you will be able to build natural links, targeted and with high importance!
Page load time and WordPress integration by utilizing core WordPress functions is another important aspect of the framework. By using it you don't need to feel like using another software then WordPress and be sure it will work on future updates. This is another thing you don't really find anymore in theme frameworks and what's funny for me is that most developers have their main marketing strategy based on this colorful theme control panels...
Anyway, the theme is in it's final testing phase and I cannot tell you more details about it until the official release, but I will gladly postpone the release date based on your suggestions on what would you like to have in a theme framework and do not see this in other themes.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions below and if you want to get notified when the theme will be public, subscribe to your mailing list in the sidebar.
Cheers!
Sounds like a great idea.
I have several wordpress sites, and mostly us elegent themes and woothemes. I have noticed that elegentthemes sites get better traction than woothemes, and both are slow at loading, compared with my Mr Mortgage site, which was built in good old MS FrontPage 2003. The thing is this site is old, but still out ranks all my sites, and I put this down to the content and the age of the site, but also the speed it loads.
I want to use WP as a CMS [static pages] with a blog, but I also want a fast site. Elegant themes are beautiful, but they seem mainly for portfolios and showing off images and photos.
There is no site suitable for a mortgage info site that can run adsense ads in post, though the new currents [news] theme on Woo looks the goods. HTML5 and CSS3 and responsive, so readable on mobile phones.
The way I see running a website on WP is to use Pages, and blog posts about the page created and have a link to it from the post.
I have used headspace2, Joost's SEO plugin [very nice] , and Elegants theme epanel, seo, which seems to do the job. So if you could incorporate something like Joost's WP SEO plugin that would be brilliant.
I agree with your comments. That SEO is basically down to unique content that is findable. And loading fast is a "queue jumper", because it saves the search engines resources and users time, and there is therefore a payoof to the search engine for ranking your pages higher.
That is the dilemma I face. To change over the Mr Mortgage Site info, and clean out the old stuff, and put it on WP may slow the site down, and so lose its speed advantage.
So a Page based structure, with subpage navigation auto formed would get me back to the ease of FrontPage 2003. The blog would be good to have more than one instance of the blog.
Custom Post Types and Taxonomies would be brilliant and useful.
With a mortgage site, it would be best to have home loans as a unique taxonomy, so that type of content could be more searchable.
The problem with categories in WP is that they sometimes get lost. They don't show in the dropdowns, but are still in the tables. I have this problem with one of my sites.
Also if you list posts in sub categories, they show in the parents? So custom post types are essential for a CMS type site, to keep products or your main service in its own taxonomy.
Hope this helps.
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Thank you for such an elaborate opinion.
From plugins point of view I'd rather not integrate many in the theme, especially some similar to WP SEO. I don't want people to loose their SEO settings if they decide to switch theme, it only seems fair like this. However, one SEO module is ready and this will analyze the content suggest the needed changes and more. This will not "lock" anyone for using the theme and for sure 99% if not all of SEO plugins does not have that functionality.
Other great SEO stuff is that i now test the theme against Google rich snippets (like search snippets for author, breadcrumbs, products, ratings, etc) and this for sure is not seen in any themes out there.
One thing I forgot to mention was that the WP "twenty eleven" theme might be a better choice to build on as it is the current WP default. It has a lot of added functionality included that may help. I will be trying this on the next project.
It appears that the "Twenty twelve" theme is some time off, but will have more functionality again.