Kirby Junior child theme

I’ve stuck with the same design for just over a year here on this blog, which is the longest I’ve ever kept a single design.

And, to be honest, I haven’t been too motivated in updating it.

But, that all changed when I saw the first version of Ian Stewart’s Kirby theme posted via Twitter.

I liked the clean design and the large, yet elegant, typography. It at least motivated me enough to start using the design from the Kirby theme here on my blog.

I don’t mind using other people’s designs, but it’s tough for me to use other code. Pretty much anything I do has to run on top of the Hybrid theme. So, I set out to make Kirby a child theme of Hybrid.

I’m now using the Kirby Junior child theme on this site.

A new default WordPress theme

The point of this post isn’t to talk about how I’m using the theme on this site, but to make note that I’d love for Kirby to be the new default WordPress theme. On the ThemeShaper blog, Ian has a fairly lengthy post on why it should be the default theme.

I’ve never liked Kubrick (current default theme) enough to run on my blog. Kirby is a theme that I’d actually use on my personal blog, which is something I don’t say often about other people’s themes.

My notes on the Kirby theme

While I am using just the design here on my blog, I did spend some time sifting through the theme code. Overall, it’s solid. These are some of my notes on version 0.3 of the Kirby theme. Let’s hope Ian can make use of these.

• Integrate post images/thumbnails. So many people use some sort of thumbnail setup these days, that it may as well be added.
• Add a default taxonomy.php file to handle custom taxonomies.
• A searchform.php file is needed for users that add a search form to their site.
• I’m not a fan of the several if/else statements in the header for the <title> element. These could less-messily be done from the theme’s functions file.
• The comment reply script should be added through functions.php and only active if a user is using threaded comments.
• Users shouldn’t be required to use a custom field to turn on comments for pages. There’s an admin option for this on the page editor screen.
• Template code cleanup. I’d like to see a better indentation system in place to help users understand what’s happening.

These are my personal ideas for the theme. Feel free to disagree. And, please offer your suggestions and thoughts on the Kirby theme post.

Or, if you have alternate ideas for what the default WordPress theme should be, share your opinion.

Please note that the design you see here on my site isn’t a completely accurate representation of the Kirby theme. The version I’m using has several modifications. I highly suggest checking out the actual theme to get a feel for how it works.

There are several plugin and theme updates in store for you all today. I’ve been working tirelessly over the past couple of weeks, tweaking things here and there, trying to nail down all of the finer details.

Most of them have been pretty fun to work on. Of course, there were a few rough patches along the way.

I’m happy to say that that I’m finished with these updates because it’ll give me time to work on a few new projects. One is a news-style child theme for Hybrid. Another is one of the coolest WordPress widgets you’ve ever seen, and I’ll be looking for beta testers of this very soon.

Get the Image

This has been one of my favorite plugins because I’ve essentially been building it for nearly two years. For those of you unfamiliar with it, here are a few features.

• Pulls images by custom field.
• If no custom field images, grabs an image attachment.
• If no attachments, it scans the post for images.
• Ability to set a fallback image if no images are found.
• Great for adding thumbnails and feature images in themes.
• Uses WordPress functions without a lot of bloat.

Get the Image was updated a few weeks back, but there was a minor bug preventing a couple of features from working correctly, so I went ahead and squashed it. The default image and image scan features are now working in version 0.3.1.

• Version 0.3.1
• Get the Image plugin page
• Download

Cleaner Gallery

Cleaner Gallery gives you valid XHTML WordPress image galleries and integrates with many different Lightbox-type scripts.

I know many of you have been patiently awaiting an update of this plugin to take advantage of WordPress 2.7′s new gallery features. Since I made you wait so long, I added loads more features to this plugin. There’s no need to worry about touching code again. Cleaner Gallery now has a spiffy new plugin settings page that gives you much more control.

• Version 0.5
• Cleaner Gallery plugin page
• Download

Widgets Reloaded

Widgets Reloaded turns most of your default WordPress widgets into powerful toys. You can use each an unlimited number of times. Plus, each widget has many extra options you can set that let you control how your widget content is displayed.

This was mostly a feature update. I believe there was only one bug with it, but it was minor. I made the settings easier to understand and added a new Authors widget.

• Version 0.1.1
• Widgets Reloaded plugin page
• Download

JavaScript Logic

JavaScript Logic allows you to conditionally control when JavaScript is loaded on your site. There’s not much point in loading a script on every page of your site when you only need it on a handful. This plugin helps you take care of that.

This one is finally coming out of beta. I’ve also added a new meta box on the Write Post/Page screen that gives you much more control. You can load JavaScript on individual posts/pages without the need to go back to the plugin settings page. You can input it when you’re writing.

• Version 0.1
• JavaScript Logic plugin page
• Download

List Subpages

This is an update to the first plugin I created. It’s actually the plugin’s first update. It has sat dormant on this site for nearly two years. I’ve used it the entire time, and it has served me well. It was badly in need of an update though. I’ve even added a new shortcode for it.

Basically, this plugin will allow you to list any page’s subpages and show a description with each. It’s pretty simple, but it was the first plugin I ever wrote.

• Version 0.2
• List Subpages plugin page
• Download

The Hybrid theme and its child themes

Hybrid was recently updated to version 0.4. Along with it, I updated three of its child themes: Leviathan, Old School, and Skeleton.

I’ve added several new widget sections to this release. I can see many great child themes in the near future. The next, as mentioned above, will be a news-style child theme. After that, I’m looking at releasing an album-/photoblog-type theme.

• Hybrid
• Leviathan
• Old School
• Skeleton

Enjoy the plugin and theme updates

I’ve had a lot of fun with these releases, but I’m ready to work on some new stuff. Let me know if you run across any bugs, and I’ll try to fix them as soon as possible.

Make sure to stay updated with this blog because I’ve got a neat plugin/widget release in the near future that I need some people to beta test. I’ll give you a hint — it’s a plugin that will essentially allow you to completely widgetize your entire WordPress theme.

If you have support questions for any of the themes or plugins listed above, please don’t ask in the comments below or by email. Go to my support forums at Theme Hybrid, which is where I handle support for all my themes and plugins.

Although The Sandbox was probably the first real use of this idea (at least that I know of), it was Thematic that really pushed the limits. I liked Thematic and would’ve designed child themes for it, but I like my own coding style a bit more than Ian’s.

Following his lead, I created the Hybrid theme framework. In this post, I’ll try to explain my reasoning behind this and address a few questions that have come up. This will not serve as a complete guide on theme frameworks; it’s just a few thoughts.

What is a theme framework?

I’m going to answer this in terms of my own framework, which may differ slightly from others’ views.

A framework is a solidly coded theme that should serve as a base for other projects.

Some can be extended through the use of child themes. A child theme hooks into its parent (the framework) and uses all of its template files and functions. The child can change both the way the parent theme looks and functions.

I honestly could’ve written Hybrid as a set of plugins instead of a theme, but I prefer to work within the framework of theme development rather than plugin development.

Here’s a list of the things that should be the focus of a theme framework. Some of these things should be standard in any theme though.

• The number one focus should be on the theme user’s content.
• Bullet-proof CSS with multiple variations.
• Valid XHTML with semantically-named classes and IDs.
• Dynamic classes that allow users to style individual elements according to the page the visitor is on and/or other factors.
• Should be flexible enough to make nearly any layout through CSS alone.
• Make extensive use of action and filter hooks to allow for overriding functions in child themes.
• SEO ready.
• Support multiple popular plugins that need to be added within template files.
• Provide solutions to common problems with WordPress.
• Compatibility with multiple versions of WordPress.
• Follow accessibility guidelines.
• Make the best use of microformats possible.
• Build on top of what others have done to make WordPress much cooler.

That’s the short list, but it covers the major bulletpoints of my list of things that should go in a framework.

WordPress is flawed

I don’t mean this in a negative way. I enjoy working with WordPress because it’s a very simple system that was made to be extended through themes and plugins. As a theme developer, it’s my job to overcome what I think might be flaws with the system, to provide solutions, a better user experience.

Sometimes WordPress spits out invalid XHTML (a rarity), but it happens. WordPress isn’t always the most accessible system on its own, which is something that should be addressed within themes. It’s probably one of the most beneficial platforms in terms of SEO, but theme developers should make this better. There are also things that I think should work in a different way, so I try to work those ideas into the theme.

When I say WordPress is flawed, I don’t mean that the system is bad. I mean this opens opportunities for theme and plugin developers to shape the sytem into something better than what it already is.

Why I really created a theme framework

I’m going to be brutally honest here and tell you that I didn’t create Hybrid for you all, at least not at first. I created it to have an easy way to manage my own blog.

I’ve never used a theme on my blog that I’ve publicly released before. Prior to Hybrid, I hardcoded just about everything around here. At a certain point, that becomes frustrating. So, when I started working on it, my goal was to make a theme for me, Justin Tadlock. I needed a theme that I could easily use out of the box, something that would cover all my needs.

I needed something that I wouldn’t have to hack up to make it work how I wanted.

Believe me, themes I’ve used here on my blog have been massively more complex than anything I’ve ever released into the wild. Recoding a theme from scratch every time I wanted a different look was not an ideal solution.

Once the theme was at a standard that was good enough for my own site, I started thinking about how to make it good enough for your sites. That’s when the theme framework was born. That’s why the first publicly released version was 0.3.

The second most important reason for creating a theme framework

I also wanted something that was flexible enough to use over and over in any number of projects. Reusing code is a foundation of good development practice. Whenever my coding skills advanced and I found a better way to do something, I’d have to recode each theme individually. With a framework, I only have to recode one theme.

Imagine if you had 10 themes to recode. Or even 20. Or 50.

Building the framework on top of semantically marked up XHTML is important here because if the XHTML is good, you can do some magical things with the accompanying CSS. I’ve coded two child themes for public release and two child themes for personal use in one month on top of the Hybrid theme. I’d be lucky to knock out two standalone themes in one month.

One could argue that solidly coding a theme from the start, coding a theme the right way, would do away with this problem. That’s true, to a degree. However, all developers and designers become better at their trade over time. I will not be as knoweldgeable today as tomorrow. Good practice this year might not be good practice next year.

This argument is trivial at best. If all software, themes, plugins, or even WordPress was coded the right way from the start, there’d be no need for new versions aside from enhancements. (This is to address your remark the other day, Ptah).

Are theme frameworks only good for developers?

Jeff Chandler posted this on Twitter:

basically, it came to a point where end users don’t benefit from theme frameworks , only theme devs do.

That may be an accurate comment in some regards. It’s also a question I feel that needs to be addressed in a longer, more thought-out post than this one. So, the question is ultimately whether end users benefit from theme frameworks. If they don’t, then we’re all wasting our time building them for anything outside of client work.

Here’s a list of things that directly benefit the end user:

• Rock-solid code for their site that is continually being updated and refined.
• Developers can churn out child themes more quickly, so the end user gets more choices.
• Easily skin your site with seasonal looks.
• You don’t have to worry about adjusting to a new theme developer’s coding style when changing themes.
• No need to transfer custom functions and features from one theme to the next.
• Building a community around one framework offers more ideas and neat things for the end user to work with.

I’m sure there are other developers that can add to this list.

Even with those benefits, there is another level of complexity. The idea of a parent/child theme relationship just confuses some people. I’ve had a lot of support behind the Hybrid theme and frameworks in general from my users at Theme Hybrid. Many of them have hopped on the child-theme bandwagon and haven’t looked back. But, there are still some users where the idea simply doesn’t register with them.

The biggest issue is understanding the concept because it is still a relatively new idea in the WordPress world, even if it has been around for some time. The best way to compensate for this is writing in-depth, quality tutorials for users that want to customize their theme.

I try to make some look at the framework as if it were a required plugin. Basically, it’s like saying that this is required for your child theme to work.

What this theme framework is all about

To break this entire post down for you, here’s the list of what I want to accomplish with my theme framework:

• Have a theme that’s good enough for my own site.
• Ability to reuse code for child themes to release back to the WordPress community.
• Have a theme that would allow quicker turnaround on client projects.
• Make it easier for end users to directly benefit from theme updates without breaking their customizations.

Other resources and theme frameworks

Here are some useful resources on theme frameworks and child themes:

• How to make a “child theme” for WordPress
  This is the only guide you’ll ever need. It also has links to loads of other references that I need not rehash here.
• Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters, and Hooks?
  A good writeup by Dan Philibin of WP Candy on the concept.
• Theme Shaper
  Ian usually has something to say on the subject, so just subscribe to his feed.

Theme frameworks you can try out:

• Hybrid (my theme, of course!)
• Thematic
• WP Framework
• The Sandbox

If you’ve created a theme framework, let me know, and I’ll add it to the list.

Final thoughts

If you’ve made it this far into the post, I’m happy that you’ve managed to make it through it all. I couldn’t possibly put down all of my thoughts and ideas into one post, so I tried to keep it as brief as possible. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of theme frameworks in this post though.

I would recommend trying out any of the frameworks mentioned within the post if you haven’t before. Also, post any and all questions you have regarding theme frameworks, parent themes, child themes, or anything at all dealing with this concept in the comments. I’ll try to address them either in the comments or a followup post.

Oh, and merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a great holiday season.

I just announced the release of the Hybrid WordPress theme at Theme Hybrid.

I wanted to also point this out on my blog here because this theme is what I’ve been working on for just over four months.

I’ve learned more about coding in those four months than I’ve learned in the past four years, studying every little piece of code I could get my hands on, digging through the core WordPress files to find functions I never knew existed.

It’s the theme I’ve been building up my coding skills for years to develop. It’s the reason I love developing for WordPress so much.

This is actually version 0.3 of the theme, but I haven’t felt ready to publicly release it until now.

Why you need to try this theme out

It’s compatible with WordPress 2.5 – 2.7. Yes, that means you get threaded comments.

A lot of people will probably say the Options theme was the pinnacle of my theme development career. Hybrid is everything that Options is not.

It’s about SEO optimization. About ease of use. Pushing WordPress beyond what we’ve pushed it before.

It is the most powerful theme I’ve ever created, yet, it is simple to use.

And, there’s a few more features:

• Created with child themes in mind. You won’t lose your customizations with theme updates.
• Theme options that are about your content and won’t get in the way of design.
• Advanced breadcrumb menu that handles every type of page.
• Attachment pages that will show off just about any type of attachment file.
• 13 page templates packaged with the theme.
• Support for over 15 plugins out of the box.
• And much more.

Theme information

I’ve released this theme under the GPL, which is the route I plan on taking with all future themes. This will be the framework that I hope to build 90% or so of my future themes upon.

• Hybrid Theme
• Download
• Demo
• Support forums

I really hope you enjoy the theme. I’ve put a lot of work into it and plan on putting in even more.

If you’re a theme developer, you already know how hard it’s going to be to make your 2.7 theme backward compatible because of all the new features being added.

I won’t go into the details of how to put together a comments.php file here. There are plenty of tutorials and themes to look at for that.

Check out Otto’s WordPress 2.7 comments enhancements tutorial to add all the extra features to your theme’s comments file.

Setting up the comment files

Let’s assume you start with a WordPress 2.6-ready comments file. What you need to do is save that file as legacy.comments.php in your theme directory.

Next, you need to create your WordPress 2.7-only comments file and save it as comments.php.

What we’ll be doing is checking the version of WordPress the theme user has installed. If they’re using 2.7, we’ll call comments.php. If they’re using 2.6 or below, we’ll use legacy.comments.php.

In your theme’s functions.php file, add this code:

<?php

add_filter('comments_template', 'legacy_comments');

function legacy_comments($file) {

	if(!function_exists('wp_list_comments')) : // WP 2.7-only check
		$file = TEMPLATEPATH . '/legacy.comments.php';
	endif;

	return $file;
}

?>

That’s it. All we did was filter the comments_template.

So, if you’re looking to add a little backward compatibility to your WordPress theme, this should help a bit.

Other resources

• comments_template filter

In this sixth post, I want to ask you a very simple question: If you were developing your own WordPress theme, what essential feature would you add?

Forget about everything else for a moment. Think of this as a desert island scenario. If you had to choose one feature for the rest of your blog’s existence, what would that feature be?

Some of you may think that having no features is a feature itself, and that’s a perfectly valid answer.

What are theme features?

Well, there are no set-in-stone rules here. Anything goes.

I’ll give you a few examples:

• The Featured Content Gallery plugin that runs off SmoothGallery.
• Ability to place widgets virtually anywhere, such as in the Thematic theme.
• Tabbed content and in the sidebar.
• Built-in SEO options in the theme backend.
• Auto-generated thumbnails for your archive pages.

Those are just examples. Features don’t have to be as flashy or complex as some of those.

What feature would you add to your WordPress theme?

Take some time to think about it. Remember, you only get to choose one feature for your site. Make it a good one.

Ideally, this feature should stand the test of time because in our scenario, it’ll forever be on your site.

I’m really excited about reading some of your answers.

In this post, we’re going to be covering theme options, or theme settings.

What are theme options?

Theme options are settings for whatever theme you’re using. In the themes section of your WordPress dashboard, there might be a page labeled Theme Options, Theme Settings, or some variation of that. This page will allow you to select particular settings for your theme.

Not all themes have an options page built in. Of course, not all themes need this page. A theme settings page might look something like this:

There could be anywhere from one or two options to tens of options.

What would you add to a theme options page?

Let’s lay down some ground rules here because every theme will be different.

1. Our theme is very basic.
2. The theme options should be about content, not style.
3. We want to get information to our users in a way that doesn’t force us to dive into code.

The most important rule is that our options page should be about content. Let’s forget layout and styling for the time being.

What would you like to see in a theme options page that would enhance your blog’s content?

For those of you that missed the announcement over at the new site, Theme Hybrid, I recently released my first exclusive members child theme for Options.

I know this is a theme release many Options users have been waiting patiently for me to put together for a long time — it’s a dark theme but the content is set on a white background.

You can read the release post or view the demo.

This is an exclusive club theme, so only users with an upgraded membership can download the theme. So, if you haven’t signed up yet, head over to the theme club page and register!

How this thing works

Good & Evil is a child theme of Options, which means that it uses all of the Options theme functions to work.

Basically, each exclusive-member theme plugs into one of the free themes offered. You first install the free parent theme. Then, you install and activate your child (exclusive) theme, which gives you all kinds of possibilities.

A child theme can be as simple as a highly-customized stylesheet to offering extra widgets, new page templates, or loads of other things.

There’ll be plenty more exclusive themes in the coming months. I have several under heavy development at the moment (there’s even a grunge theme in the works for those of you that like that style).

Why?

Too many Options.

For those of you that don’t know, Options was a theme I released back in February this year, and it has since garnered well over 30,000 downloads (these numbers will seem insignificant as the WordPress theme directory continues rolling).

One of the reasons the theme has been so popular is its options page and magazine-style look. Just take a look at what the theme settings page looks like for the most recent version.

Yes, that’s a lot of options. Too many.

Why too many theme options is bad

I first started putting a lot of thought into this with Ian Stewart’s post, Theme Options Can Make Your Theme Worse. The topic recently came up again when he linked to Jeff Chandler’s post Why I Don’t Use Shifter Anymore (Shifter is apparently another them with a lot of options).

From my experience, users tend to like all these extra options straight from their admin panel. The less coding work, the better, right?

Yes, until you need to modify something that’s not included on the theme settings page.

One of the things I’ve been moving toward is the idea of child themes. If you don’t know what child themes are, Dan Philibin has a good post explaining this: Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters, and Hooks?. I’ll also be going into some details in a few future posts about this concept.

A lot of theme options can just create a mess in the long run. It gives you less flexibility with child themes and personal modifications.

For example, let’s say that I wanted to create a child theme for Options. The biggest problem I would run into when making this theme is having to account for every option already available in the [Options] parent theme.

I would also lose a lot of flexibility in adding new features through child themes.

Now, let’s suppose I didn’t want to make child themes for Options. With a theme as complex as it is, there’ll always be fairly regular updates because the code is always being optimized. Well, if you’ve modified something in the files, you probably wouldn’t want to update your theme.

For that reason, the child theme concept is much better. But, with this particular theme, there’s less room for future goodies.

Why I’m switching to child themes

I recently wrote a post showcasing the power of child themes. It shows a parent theme and what I transformed it into on ThemeHybrid.com with a child theme.

Using child themes, I can regularly update the parent theme and let users modify their child themes in any way.

The Options theme just doesn’t cut it as a solid foundation to work from because I can’t do as much with it now that so many things are set in stone, so to speak.

Some theme options are good, but if you’re a theme author, take some time out to plan for the future of your theme. If you think you’ll ever go down the path of parent/child themes, then theme options should be kept to a minimum.

For those of you that love the Options theme, don’t worry. I’m always working on it and will continue doing so. I could easily write a post about why it’s my favorite theme.

Tonight, I was a bit surprised to see that there was a new WordPress Themes Directory. I was completely caught off guard as I hadn’t checked my WordPress dashboard yet. Yes, I check WordPress.org before my own site’s admin panel.

What does all this mean for current WordPress theme authors?

It’ll probably mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

I’m happy to see the folks over at WP.org taking some initiative with themes. It’s been a long time since we had something remotely decent with WordPress themes and the WordPress.org stamp of approval.

We’ve seen the WordPress theme market take a lot of turns in the last year or so, especially with the pay-for-use market really shaking things up. And, I hope to shake things up a little more with Project M (more on this in a coming post).

My questions for you are:

1. What effect will this have on the way we currently get themes?
2. Do you see this as a step in the right direction?
3. How will this change (if at all) the premium theme market (I imagine this is on a few people’s minds)?
4. Will this make it harder for new theme authors to get their themes out who don’t want to use the directory?

I knew this day was coming but was a bit surprised that it actually happened. One thing to note is that all themes must have a GPL-compatible license, which is sure to generate some discussion.

My initial thoughts

Will my themes start popping up in the new theme directory?

As of now: no.

I’ve thought about this for much longer than the last few minutes since I knew the theme directory would eventually get reestablished.

I’m sure I’ll lose quite a lot of potential downloads and users, but I’m planning on going a much different route with my themes. I’ve invested too much time in doing things my way.

One of the reasons for not going the theme directory route is because I believe in being able to support my themes 100%. I don’t feel like the WP.org support system will work well in this type of capacity. I’m much more inclined to run my own support forums.

Another reason, and I won’t get into it here, is the GPL license thing. I’m always riding the fence on this, and I’ll just leave it at that.

Lastly, I’m a control freak. Seriously. I like to have full control over everything, which I’ll have to give up a little with the theme directory. It does look like a good system that’ll offer a lot of control to theme authors, but it’s still not enough for me.

Ultimately, WordPress is promoted, and that’s always a good thing. It’ll make things much easier for first-time WordPress users to get their hands on a theme and start learning the system.

What are your initial thoughts?

Read the development blog release post.