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Jeff Chandler

Hybrid Core 3.0 Experiments With Community-driven Documentation

Hybrid Core 3.0, developed by Justin Tadlock, is available for download. More than a year in the making, 3.0 has over 269 commits and a slew of new features.

After the release of Hybrid Core 2.0 last year, Tadlock assumed it would be at least two years before he tackled another major release, “I’d planned on doing minor and patch releases for a while, all along building themes,” he said.

“However, a lot has changed in the theming world in just the past year. WordPress has added a lot of cool features for theme authors that were previously handled by Hybrid Core,” Tadlock said.

Tadlock wants the project to feel fresh and one way to do that is to remove features that are handled natively by WordPress. Features removed from Hybrid Core include:

  • Atomic hooks functionality.
  • Random Custom Background extension.
  • Featured Header extension.
  • Cleaner Caption extension (handled in WP).
  • Loop title/description (replaced by WP).
  • Pagination (replaced by WP).

It’s clear that the customizer in WordPress is here to stay and will be an important part of the project’s future. Hybrid Core 3.0 adds a variety of enhancements that make the customizer more flexible, these include:

  • Color Palette.
  • Multiple Checkbox.
  • Dropdown Terms.
  • Layout.
  • Radio Image.
  • Select Group.
  • Multiple Select.

There’s also a few customizer setting classes:

  • Array Map.
  • Image Data.

Tadlock Experiments with Community-driven Documentation

One of the largest changes to the Hybrid project is opening up documentation to be community-driven. The Hybrid Core wiki hosted on Github is now open to contributions from the community.

Tadlock believes that this will drive adoption of the framework by more theme authors, “The more developers we have using and contributing to the project, the better,” he said.

If the community responds well to the experiment, it will allow Tadlock to focus on longer-form tutorials for club members, something he feels he’s better at doing than reference style documentation.

Hybrid Core 3.0 includes a number of features, bug fixes, and improvements. If you want to see all of the changes in 3.0, check out the lengthy changelog.

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16 responses to “Hybrid Core 3.0 Experiments With Community-driven Documentation”

  1. Now, we just need to get the ball rolling with some documentation in the wiki pages. It’s pretty sparse at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll get there in the coming months. I’ll be able to transfer some existing docs over. One of my big hopes is that this move frees me up to put more focus back on theme users, which make up for the bulk of Theme Hybrid’s user base.

    Thanks for the coverage, Jeff.

    • One question: can you explain why you dropped the Atomic hook functionality? I think it’s very useful in a theme framework. I’m using it in my theme and it’s very powerful.

      • That’s a legacy feature that I no longer use. I almost dropped it in 2.0 but kept it around for nostalgia. Some of these things go back to a time when child themes couldn’t even have templates. These were ideas we were playing around with back then. WordPress’ template part system really made this obsolete.

        Feel free to copy it from 2.0 if you need it. It’s not much code.

        • Thanks for your answer.

          Although the WordPress template system can solve this problem, for a theme which has many hooks (for plugins to hook into), I think it still useful. At least it reduces duplicated code and still keep the logic clear. But for simple themes, I agree with you. WordPress template parts are enough.

  2. I have to say that, after a long inspection of the 3.0 release, I am very impressed with Hybrid Core. Justin has done a wonderful job in creating a foundation that bridges the gap between those new to WordPress theming and seasoned theme developers who see the wisdom in not reinventing a perfected product. I look forward to building a new theme with Hybrid Core. And the community driven documentation is a smart move.

  3. Awesome! I’m happy that the documentation of Hybrid Core is public and shared on Github. Previously it was available for members of ThemeHybrid only.

    This is one of my favourite theme framework. Justin is doing a great work. Looking into the code of Hybrid Core is interesting and there is a lot of things to learn.

    Thanks Justin!

  4. Great news! I’ve been eyeing the Stargazer theme for a while now, but the last update was a long time ago. Maybe this release will bring a theme update.

  5. I have huge respect for the work that Justin does. It’s nice to see that the number of features is shrinking over time and instead of increasing. It’s too often that we see themes, plugins and other software expanding rapidly over time * glares at WordPress core*. It is rare to see anyone with the confidence to make things smaller and leaner.

    • At the moment, I have no plans to add it, but I’ve given it some thought. Considering that the code would just basically be adding some custom text strings to core WP’s cropped image control, I’m not sure the control alone is worth it as a feature.

      If I ever did logos, I’d probably make a full feature where theme authors could make a simple add_theme_support() call (like custom header and background) along with custom functions for displaying the logo and such.

  7. Justin,

    I have searched and searched for a reliable, full featured, capable of heavy lifting Wiki plugin on the WordPress platform, and someone told me that Hybrid Core 3.0 might provide the answer?

    Any truth; now or in the future?

    Terence.

    • Hybrid Core is a theme framework. The documentation is Wiki-based, but the framework itself would never handle the job of a Wiki system. That’s plugin territory.

      • And unfortunately for me, there doesn’t seem to be an uptodate, reliable Wiki Plugin available either in the repository or anywhere else that I can find. It seems like its something we all need but almost nobody is devoting any time to developing one.

        Or are am I missing something and there’s some other, new form of creating collaborative content on the horizon?

        • We’ve used Formidable for a wiki on our site. It wouldn’t include tracking of who made which changes, but you can create and manage pages and allow any logged in user to edit.

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