WP theme frameworks?
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- jysta
Anyone on here use them?
Thematic, Hybrid, WP Candy Starter theme, WP Framework, Starkers, Sandbox etc...
I've dabbled in a few but always seem to go back to Starkers. Or my own child theme from Twenty Ten.
Given all the recent updates with WP over the past 6 months I just wanted to get an up-to-date gauge on what people are preferring to use these days as a framework...
- ukit0
Theme frameworks, child themes, is there a point to it? Like you said it always made more sense to take something like Starkers and customize...
- Stugoo0
Ive been relying o WP themes for a while now... Ive decided to start from scratch and build my own to get the jist of how it all works... but I am starting with the HTML5 boilerplate theme... skin and bones.
- vaxorcist0
hmmm..... I think I'm too old for this shit....
Learning the framework designer's way of thinking can supposedly reward you with easier-to-do stuff in the future, but my brain would rather do the shit myself than figure out how somebody else's complexity-in-the-name-of-simpli... has decided to insert yet annother layer of abstraction into the mix...
It's like those cars with "auto-stick".... I'd rather just drive a stick shift... or maybe an automatic in a traffic jam, but why the compromise-o-rama attempt at both?
- detritus0
I want out of WP, I really do.
Sorry, this is little to no use to your query, jysta...
I just wanted a quick yelp in to the uncaring abyss.
- raf0
It always seemed absurd to me to layer another framework on wp which is a framework itself. I understand it is to deal with wp's shortcomings but it's kind of like painting over duct tape.
I wonder if someone, someday forks wordpress and detaches it from its legacy dependencies. But then you could just as well write a new cms from scratch...
- yes..... kind of like training wheels on a tricyclevaxorcist
- dMullins0
I prefer Roots over Starkers now: http://www.rootstheme.com/
- that's a rip dudejadrian_uk
- Nice! - thanks for the link.jysta
- Actin' like a bitch again, I see.dMullins
- jadrian_uk0
I hate php frameworks, for ex Symfony, what do they do at Symfony?, they simply copy the Java concept and embed it to php, make everything a class/object, for php and web dev such thing is silly and symfony is slow, it looks like the only way php can be fast is thru plain php, and fuck php too is such a commercial and non concise language.
- and dollar sign is such BS in a script or computer languagejadrian_uk
- Most PHP frameworks are shit compared to what's available in JAVA and .NETfugged
- maybe because the WHOLE IDEA of PHP is that it's for SIMPLER stuff you don't NEED a framework forvaxorcist
- That depends on the framework, and what you are trying to achieve.fugged
- yes fugged i agree , JAVA is so amazing and there's so much stuff you can do with it, it is a very well designed languagejadrian_uk
- Python FTWukit
- jysta0
Hmm. I spent 2 years trying to avoid WP but in the end - well it got me. :)
Coming from a front-end / design POV I guess its more about letting the framework take care of the Php/coding side of things in the most simple effective and optimised way so that I can focus on the presentation.
Regardless this thread has got me digging and this may be of use to some:
Boilerplate - Starkers WP Theme
http://aarontgrogg.com/boilerpla…- And another:
http://www.twentyten…jysta - And another:
http://themble.com/b…jysta
- And another:
- vaxorcist0
I see what you 're thinking... Starkers is interesting, seems less over-abstraction-layer than some others...
- caput580
- sandbox is what i work with...caput58
- http://code.google.c…caput58
- nocomply0
I've tried a couple of frameworks, but personally I don't like them.
Like others have mentioned, I find that I have the most control and the most confidence to implement whatever I want when I develop a theme from scratch.
I start with the old-school and outdated Sandbox theme (http://wordpress.org/extend/the... and I strip out what I don't want and then get to hacking applying my own css, html, js etc... on top of it.
I wind up needing to add a few custom code snippets to the theme's function.php file in order to make it work with some of the more modern WP features (menus, featured images/thumbnails, style-editor.css, etc...) but to me that's no big deal.
What I eventually did was make my own personally-modified version of the Sanbox theme which I use as a starting point for all of my WP builds.
When I find another theme or theme framework that has some kind of functionality that I need, I generally try to copy it over into my own theme rather than build around someone else's work.
As others have said, I find it more difficult to wade through and make sense of someone else's code than to build my own. I think that's a common thing for a lot of developers.
- nocomply0
I also want to add that although I see the value in child-themes, I don't think they're actually helpful for the way that I work with WP.
The only place where I can see them being of use is if I am using someone else's theme and making just a few minor tweaks to a few theme files.
Correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm not grasping the full power of child themes.
- logi0
is it that you fear the wordpress codex?
why not design and code your own framework, then drop the necessary template tags into the code?
seems easier to build what you want instead of hacking something else into something near what you want.
- vaxorcist0
Hmmm.... I think alot of this theme-fear is that we're used to INVENTING rather than being detectives, figuring out how other people think and just adding a bit to it....
That said, I've found frameworks in Wordpress to give me TONS of random stuff I don't need for the 10% of stuff I do.... too much haystack per needle...
- ukit0
The terminology gives me a headache too because aren't themes like Starkers not really frameworks but actually more like "starter themes?"
I was under the impression framework referred to something where you leave the original theme alone and build on top of it as opposed to customizing.
- jysta0
A 'starter theme +plus' maybe? :)
Frameworks offer too much bloat / starter themes no enough to hit the ground running.
Something that is common to use at the beginning of each project to enable you to get struck straight into building a design and layout without having to mess about with all the Wordpress template tags. Something to use as a starting block for any WP site design.
IMO Starkers/Sandbox on it's own I don't think offers this in it's stand-alone guise. But combining it with html5 boilerplate and a grid.css perhaps is... Then there's the built in support for the latest 3.1 + features which 2010 does well but others not so much.
HTML5 boilerplate is something I've been looking into today. Everybody's different but I'm starting to think that: Starker's + HTML5 Boiler Plate + Grid = rapid WP deployment, with a good compromise between control, bloat and built in features.
- vaxorcist0
and of course, you run the risk of update hell....
- raf0
It's strange that with all these thousands of themes out there there wasn't a good clean template for building a new one.
http://www.plaintxt.org never seemed stripped to me, starkers is the one I used but it's full of leftover twenty ten references...
I'll try the boilerplate one.
This reflects the whole WP situation—it works but it is a clusterfuck UI-wise and you don't even want to think how messy under the hood.
I forget how to find my way around a client's wp site I hadn't logged on to in a while, I can only imagine it must be hard for the client. I guess this is why it works for the industry:
1. client pays for cms
2. client feels too dumb to use it
3. billable hours updating stuff for client using his cms
- ukit0
Is there a good starter theme that incorporates a slideshow or image gallery type functionality?