Comparisons Between Most Popular Theme Frameworks

This is a guest post from Dan Cole, who is currently developing his own theme called the Parallel Theme

Developing a WordPress theme from the ground up is a big task. Sure it might not take long to throw up the basics, but there are a lot of small details that can go into a site. Frameworks are a tool to make developing a theme easier and quicker. Their not something that everyone needs to use, but it’s an option for people. However, getting going in this field can be confusing. The theme development community has some issues to get through and it really messes up some ideas about what is what.

Lets start out with the general terms and move inward. Themes are a part of WordPress that make displaying content possible. Through themes, all information is formatted, styled, and structured into a website design. But because of all the features that can go into these themes, two types of master themes were created. The first type are called frameworks and like its name, are designed to be a starting point for theme developers. The second type should be called base themes, but instead are also referred to as frameworks. These base themes are designed to be parent themes for other themes and allow for easily modifying the visual look of a site. Or from the other side, allow core code to be updated without messing around with the details about what makes a website unique. However, to be technical, it’s not this black and white. Frameworks and base themes could be regular themes or vise versa.

I would like to compare and contrast some of the most popular WordPress Frameworks and Base Themes. I believe it’s something that people picking between different themes would like to see and that it needs to show the answers to important questions in a simple way. However, this comparison is going to over simplify things and hide the reasoning behind the choices made by these developers. Theme Frameworks and Base Themes are not a case of right and wrong, good and bad, or even rich and lacking, but a choice in opinion. I’m hoping this comparison points people that are considering a framework to the developer and to the project that has similar goals in terms of what should be in a WordPress Theme. I would also hope that this comparison points out how much more thought goes into these themes, then the majority of other themes out there. This comparison doesn’t look at the style of the design or arrangement of sidebars, because the answer to those questions would be “How ever you want“. Instead, I want to look at the initial and little details. These are the themes that every theme should be based off, because they aren’t a quick project, but a collection of every detail, that a theme should include. These themes are also developed continuously, not just patched up so they work on the current version of WordPress.

For people developing themes or interested, I would suggest thinking of themes like computers. No one company makes the whole package. The Processor, Operating System, Programs, and assembly is all made or done by different companies.

Question | Thematic | Hybrid | Carrington
Type 1 Classification | Theme Framework | Theme Framework | Blank Theme
Type 2 Classification | Base Theme | Base Theme | Theme Framework
Author: | Ian Stewart | Justin Tadlock | Alex King (Crowd Favorite)
Site URL: | Themeshaper.com | ThemeHybrid.com | CarringtonTheme.com
Is it licensed under the GPL? | Yes | Yes | Yes

Last Version release date:
(As of April 1st, 2009)

March 1st, 2009

March 29th, 2009

March 24th, 2009

Unzipped file size: | 518 KB (Is this right or is it me?) | 708 KB | 529 KB (Is this right or is it me?) |
How well is the code documented? | Section Titles & Inline comments in the tricky parts. | Section Tiles & version code was added. | Read Me files for each directory
Number of Custom Hooks: | 18 | 31 | 23
Number of Custom Filters: | 39 | 40-50 | 6
Visual aid of widget area locations? | Yes | Yes | N/A
Type of aid for hook and filter locations? | Visual | Documentation | N/A
Number of Publicly available Child Themes? (linked to by main site) | 16 | 4 | N/A
Number of (Default) widget areas: | 13 | 9 | 2
Is a CSS Reset done? | Yes (with @import) | Yes | Yes (… N/A)

What plugins will auto insert if installed and activated?

WP-PageNavi

Subscribe To Comments

All-In-One SEO Pack

Comment License

Headspace 2

Clean Archives

Cleaner WordPress Gallery Plugin

Configurable Tag Cloud Widget

Easy Contact

Hot Friends

No Widget Category Cloud

Smart 404

Smart Archives

Smarter Archives

Subscribe To Comments

WP Pagenavi

None

What CSS grid system is used? | Custom (based on Blueprint, Tripoli and 960gs) | None | N/A

How is the footer content modified?

Options page

Filterable

Options page

Filterable

Widgetized

Options page

Body tag classes:

CMS (WordPress)

Year visitor is viewing

Month visitor is viewing

Day visitor is viewing

Hour visitor is viewing

Year published

Month published

Day published

Hour published

Page slug

Page ID

Page Author

Page Template

Has a parent template

Operating System

Browser

Browser Version

Categories

Tags

WordPress logged in/out status

Page ID

Page Author

Page Template

Type of template

Operating System

Browser

Browser Version

Categories

Tags

Left-To-Right Content

Non-empty Widget Area Names

Supposedly has some

Has or uses IE hacks? | No (with the exception of one minor superscript/subscript fix) | No | No
Valid HTML | Yes | Yes | Yes
Compatible with WordPress versions: | 2.7+ | 2.6+ | 2.3 (Maybe)
Uses Microformats? | Yes | Yes | Yes
Language Support (For non-English sites) | Yes | Yes | Yes
Gravator enables? | Yes | Yes | Yes
Is there a print CSS file? | No | Yes | No
Is there a default layout? | Yes | Yes | Yes
Modular Comment Section ( Can trackbacks and pings be seperated?): | Yes | No | Yes
Custom Comment code or taken from Kubrick? | Custom (based on Sandbox) | Custom | Custom

Default Templates:

tag.php

single.php

search.php

page.php

links.php

index.php

archive.php

404.php

category.php

archives.php

author.php

attachment.php

404.php

application.php

archive.php

archives.php

attachment.php

audio.php

author.php

authors.php

biography.php

blog.php

bookmarks.php

category.php

categories.php

comments.php

comments-popup.php

date.php

home.php

image.php

index.php

logged-in.php

log-in.php

no-widgets.php

page.php

profile.php

register.php

search.php

single.php

sitemap.php

tag.php

tags.php

text.php

video.php

widgets.php

404.php

archive.php

archives.php

author.php

category.php

image.php

links.php

page.php

single.php

search.php

tag.php

What are the backend options?

Position of widget-ready area on index page.

Include mirco-formatted vCard with bio on the author pages.

Content in footer.

Basic Theme Settings

Title, meta, indexing settings

Comment and Avatars

Footer Settings

Customizable Colors

Header Image

Load comments and posts via AJAX

Use lightbox

“About” text area

Analytics area

Resource to find out all hooks and filters: | Guide to customizing Thematic | Hooks (members only) | Included Readme
HTML doc type: | XHTML 1.0 Transitional | XHTML 1.0 Strict | XHTML 1.0 Transitional
Number of years the lead author has done PHP? | 2 years | 3 years | 10 years
Number of years the lead author has done HTML & CSS? | 3 years | 6 years | 12 years

Hopefully this has answered most of your questions. My needs and wants likely differ from the majority, so I tried my best to be well rounded. Maybe this will get the ball rolling in terms of discussion. I really feel that showing the cards like this does take the work away of figuring it out for yourself and that it will show developers what everyone else is up to.

Some theme frameworks were left out. I wish I could have included them all. Blame Jeffro if you will, he made the page too narrow and I didn’t want to write small. So now I’ll hand it off to everyone else, what other interesting facts should we look at?