If any of you’ve wondered where I’ve been the last couple of days, then I must tell you that I’ve been hard at work creating more options for the The Undersigned that helped. His example didn’t quite work right, and it took a bit of customization to fix.
Now, you can control your theme layout style from a page called “Structure Options,” whether you want to display the category tabs and their posts, and what specific categories you want in the tabbed categories section on the home page.
Creating the theme options page was so easy that I might release some other layout styles and color variations in future updates. There is minimal coding involved, so it wouldn’t be hard to do.
Widgets:
Automattic’s article on widgetizing themes was a bit lacking, which made this the hardest part to do. Turning some of my content blocks (video, recent) into widgets didn’t work well with the widget system at first.
The “home.php” file with its two content block sections below the category tabs and “sidebar.php” are now widget-ready in a very cool way. You can mix and match different sections of the sidebar or left and right home columns with theme-specific content blocks.
The great thing about this is that widget users now have full access to what non-widget users have — custom widgets for the Structure theme.
Thoughts:
With this system in place, I feel like I’m catering to a much larger WordPress crowd. Before, with all the customization it took to get things just right, I was shutting a door to a large portion of the WordPress community, even if I try to write complete “readme.txt” files.
The “readme.txt” file is now almost 14kb with around 2,000 words. It’s very informative, but still lacking a lot of information. I thought it’d be a little easier to give users a control panel (theme options and widgets) to work with than make them read any more than they have to.
I hope this satisfies current theme users and brings in new ones. It should be a good foundation to continue working from.
Tomorrow, I should return to my regular blogging schedule, but before I do, here’s a couple of questions for you. What kind of theme options would you like to see in Structure and future WordPress themes? Do you have any other ideas to add?
This looks great Justin. You’ve really made me think more about what a theme can and should do, and I’m pretty certain that’s a positive thing. I don’t have any suggestions because this so surprisingly nice and easy to use. I don’t know what to say other than “well done.”
Justin, I downloaded Structure 1.0 and have been customizing it for days now. Should I upgrade to 1.1 if I’m ok with what I have? Are there any security enhancements that I need on the 1.1 release?
Great theme, thanks a lot.
I’ve been looking for two years for something that just wows me. I finally found it. I hope it’s easy to use. Of all the sites I’ve seen, your site is the best! Where else can you get such great templates, expertise, and tips on writing. I’ve seen these offerings, but none as professional and as awesome as yours, not even close.
Thank you so much,
I’ve moved your comment over to the appropriate page, Structure: WordPress theme comment.
- Justin Tadlock
David
Thank you. I had an English teacher that always told my class to think outside the box. So, I try to apply that to all areas of my life, even Web design. I’m still learning the system and just trying to bring my ideas out through it.
Luis
You don’t need to upgrade. I added version 1.1 to make it a little easier for those that don’t know how to customize the theme.
This also depends on the type of customization you’ve done. If you’re just changing “style.css,” then you should definitely upgrade because nothing in that file has changed. Quite a few of the template files have changed, so I wouldn’t upgrade if you’ve customized those. There are also no security upgrades.
Tracie
You’re welcome. That’s what this update was for — making things easier for the user. Version 1.0 was a little harder and made it so that you must read that 2,000-word “readme.txt” file. I’m trying to take a little work away from the user. Of course, the image uploading and custom fields can be a little tricky for newcomers, but you’ll find them easy once you’ve played with it a little bit.
Thank you Justin.
Hi:
Podrias publicar sobre este tema en Español?. Can you post some about this theme in spanish?
Luis
No problem.
Gilberto
My Spanish is very limited because I’ve had to switch languages so many times in my life. First Spanish, then German, and now Korean. I never learn enough of one language to use it well, so I can’t write about it in Spanish.
That makes my mouth watery >;o) Will try that maybe for eliZZZa.net…
eliZZZa
Are you talking about the theme options or widgets? Well, adding either one or both is great.
You can essentially widgetize your entire site if you want to. Your “functions.php” file could get a little bulky, but you could change layout elements without leaving your WordPress dashboard.
Justin – The update to Structure is simply awesome! It’s probably THE best WordPress theme I’ve ever seen. I’ve been wanting to develop a similar theme for months now, but you’ve done it so perfectly that I think I’ll just tinker with Structure. Again, great job.
For future development… I’d suggest multiple, page-unique, widgetized sidebars. I read a great article on how to accomplish this that may be helpful: multiple-wordpress-widget-sidebars
Ah, I should add… the above is a great tutorial. But I noticed that things get rather messy when you’ve got a theme with 3-4 widgetized sidebars that you want to be unique on different pages. As you can imagine, the Widget control page gets big and potentially confusing! Unfortunately I don’t have the expertise to split the Widget CP into two or three different pages.
Bryan
I originally had widgetized sidebars for each unique page (categories, archives, etc.), but decided against it because the control panel widget blocks are huge. It makes it hard to drag items from the widget box to the sidebars. It was just too messy, and that didn’t seem to fit with a theme called “Structure.”
I don’t think I’ll update this in the future, unless the WordPress team addresses this issue or I figure out how to do it.
I’d love to see what you come up with after your “tinkering.”
I’m trying to decide whether to continue expanding this theme or work on a new idea I have for a much better theme, structurally speaking.
Justin
I just thought of a new suggestion for future updates… how about widgetizing the tabbed content blocks? I recently discovered a plug-in that sort of does this.
http://www.wp-fun.co.uk/fun-with-sidebar-tabs/
However, this method uses a custom sidebar in the Widget Control Panel to “simulate” a tabbed widget. So you add existing widgets to the custom sidebar, then drag & drop the tabbed widget into an existing sidebar. This is a somewhat confusing why to go about it. And this way you can only use one tabbed widget.
But the results and there and it works! I think you could execute better though.
Bryan
Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out when I get a chance and see if it’s worth implementing.
hi justin
super template
would appreciate your thoughts on how it could be best adapted so the right sidebar (div #sidebar) will be a fixed-width sidebar (as it is now with no change) and the left side content (div #content and the home-categories on the home page) will be liquid/fluid making the whole site elastic so it will fit in 800×600 resolutions.
in other words
1. have a fluid left content area with fixed width sidebar/s on the right
2. allow the content column to appear first in the source
basically incorporating the ideas in http://www.alistapart.com/articles/holygrail/ so the stucture template can fit in 800×600 resolutions and be fluid/elastic to work in both 1024×768 and 1280 x 1024
please keep us posted
Albert
This idea of fluid-width won’t exactly work with this theme. It was designed on a specific three-column grid with each grid being the same width. Feel free to edit it to your liking though.
This is absolutely superb, Justin. I’ve just started work on a redesign of my site (currently using a heavily modified Kubrik). Part of my original design involved battling to create a fluid left column and fluid elements within the right sidebar. I look forward to trying to work the same into your fantastic theme!
How about drop-down menus for the Page button at the top? Is that hard to do?
Love the theme. I am thinking of using it for a community website but I too am curious about the possibility to add dropdown menus for I will have a bit of static pages as well.. Any thoughts?
hey Justin
i’m using your structure theme and i’ve customized the theme (hope cutomizing the theme is legal)
my website is all about Indian Movies & Music. so, i thought customizing the theme will help me alot. here, what i meant by customizing the theme is nothing but changing the colors
if you’ve some time, have a look http://www.indihot.com
Thanks for the Wonderful Wordpress theme.
Vaasu
Duncan
I’d love to see what you can come up with.
04
Sounds like a cool idea. I actually haven’t worked much with drop-down menus in the past. I’m actually adding them to theme we’re putting together at Project Community Theme. So, it might be an option for Structure down the road.
DeFries
I’ll honestly have to look into the drop-down menus later (see reply to 04).
Vaasu
Everything looks good. I love the color changes.
hi justin, thanks to you for sharin this theme.
i need a help for this theme.i am using your theme but when i write new post my latest post seeing the underside.i want to see my latest post upper side.
could you help me ?
Hi Justin, I like your Structure theme very much! My problem is that I have about 40 posts all with the class=”alignleft” instruction in the image code, and your theme recognises only class=”left” I think. I’ve tried all sorts of things that didn’t work. Do you have an easy solution?
I would definitely consider the Structure Theme for one of my blogs