I was unaware that the U.S. with the exception of a few people were in front of their TV’s to watch the season premiere of LOST. Thankfully, I had Kim Parsell and Ryan Duff call in to make sure I wasn’t lonely on the show. We actually had a great conversation centered around the future of themes, theme frameworks, HTML5, the default theme, etc. It was a theme show for sure but when you get me on the topic of theme frameworks, rant mode kicks in and it’s hard for me to let go. I’d be interested in your thoughts after you hear the rants.
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Stories Discussed:
WPTavern mentioned in .Net Magazine
WPVote.com Launches
Group Interview With Commercial Theme Designers
WordPress for Android Released
Default Theme Is HTML 5 Compliant
Future Of WordPress Themes For 2010
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Next Episode: Tuesday, February 9th 8P.M. EST
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Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 26 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode87.mp3
Listen To Episode #87:
Frameworks for End-Users
I have to disagree with the notion that a theme’s code should be written for non-developers. To the average WP user, who just picks their favorite looking theme, the code matters not. This means that the code could be horrible. The benefit of any framework is that potential issues have been addressed and continue to be worked on (SEO, speed, validity, compatibility, accessibility, etc.).
For the end user that wants to make minor changes to things, like the wording of the byline, theme frameworks could make it a bit easier. But I don’t think building a theme should adhere to what is easiest for people to tweak. So theme option pages may be in order. People obviously love Thesis because of its options.
On Hybrid specifically, Jeff is right about it being developed for developers. Justin’s idea is that he’ll provide the foundation and developers can add on to it. So its certainly within the realm of possibilty to create a theme options plugin for Hybrid. I’ve already built one to change the byline. This seems ideal to me as well; the theme is as robust or minimalistic as you want it to be. These things will just take time.
Frameworks for Developers
Also, I wanted to address why I think frameworks are excellent for client work. You’re not really adding any bloat to a client’s website with code that you’re not using. Sure, a framework will have a large
zip
file, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t optimized to run fast. In fact, it may run more efficiently than a brand new theme because everything has been thought through. Plus, its much more flexible to make changes to a client’s site in the future.Retiring Annual Themes
What they’re planning on doing is releasing 2010 until the 2011 theme is released. They won’t necessarily retire 2010 but it won’t ship with core. So the WP package won’t increase with size each year. If you’re already using 2010 when the 2011 theme comes out you’ll still be ok (like Ryan suggested).