Ptah Dunbar.com

WP Framework 0.1 is out!

October 25th, 2008 under My Projects

This one’s a quickie because I’ve been up over 72 hours… don’t ask.

Today, I’m happy to announce that WP Framework, The Ultimate WordPress Theme Framework, is officially out and available for download.
What is it you might ask? Well if the tagline didn’t reveal too much, it’s essentially a blank WordPress theme—on steroids!

Check out the demo, see how it’s grown since day 1, or download it now and build some themes!

Still here? Hmm… your probably trying to wrap your head around the steroids part. Well then let me further elaborate what WP Framework actually is.

It’s a development theme. A theme that gets out of your way and let’s you focus on the good stuff—Site Specific Features.

That’s really all there is to say right now as WP Framework is only in it’s first release stages (release early, release often!). Like I said during one of my little brainstorming sessions, expect to see A LOT more “goodies” in the upcoming releases. I was just laying the foundation down for this release, I can’t wait to show you what I’ve really got in store for WP Framework!

The 80/20 Rule chop and screwed for WordPress

October 13th, 2008 under Wordpress

Here’s an interesting quote from Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married” movie chop and screwed for WordPress:

There comes a point in time when our software is most likely only able to offer us 80% of what we need. Then there are times when we will find a similar package that fills in those voids, offering the other 20%…and because it’s been missing for so long, you think you’ve finally found what you truly need. But be carefully taking risks of switching, or leaving your 80%…because what you will be left with, is that 20%. Obviously this is nowhere near as fulfilling as having software that offers 80%
-orginal quote from lanaberry

*cough* *cough* *cough* just saying…

Wanna play with WP Framework?

October 6th, 2008 under Wordpress

I’m about 19 days away from releasing the 0.1 release of WP Framework to the public and would love to get some really constructive criticism/feedback on its current state. For those impatience ones, download it now and read later.

First, let me tell you what it is and what it’s not so you have some clear guidelines to base your thoughts on.

WP Framework is primarily built to speed up development time for WordPress themes. In essence, it’s a blank theme with a base style, similar to blueprint but minus the fluff. So if you do front-end web development or the like, you’ll be in heaven.

For the 0.1 release, I just wanted to develop the bare minimums that any standards compliant theme should have nowadays. You know, comment/trackback separation, clean semantic xhtml/css classes/ids, microformats support… all that good stuff. Looking for killer features, hooks/filters, theme options and all those crazy stuff? Yeah, not yet… WP Framework will boast those types of features + more in upcoming releases. So don’t worry; it’ll be buzzword complaint when it makes sense to go down that route.

As for being a great parent for child themes, it’s a little lacking compared to the highly regarded Thematic (*bows*). Currently, the best way to modify WP Framework is directly if you haven’t been bitten by the child theming virus yet. I developed WP Framework in a way so you can take advantage of both sides of the Oreo.

When modifying it directly, all of your CSS styles should go neatly into the screen.css file. Pretty much what “How to Protect CSS Mods for ANY WordPress Theme” by Chris Pearson said.

As for modifying the xHTML in the template files, well that’s inevitable. In a perfect world, you would adapt your styling to the holy way of the Framework. Here’s a glimpse on the main structure:

<html lang="en-US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"></head>

<body>

    <div id="container">

        <div id="header"></div>

        <div id="content">

            <div id="primary" class="hfeed"></div>

            <div id="secondary"></div>

        </div>

        <div id="footer"></div>

    </div>

</body>
</html>

With this format, you should be able to achieve not all, but many, many layout variations. Seek inspiration over at CSS Zen Garden if needed.

Worst case scenario you’ll scrap everything and roll your own xHTML structure. Hey, I’m fine with that but when the time comes for upgrading to benefit from new features; you’re not going to enjoy backtracking all those changes. If it ever comes down to that, which I hope doesn’t happen, but if, I’ll be sure to include a changelog.txt to document what’s new and changed.

In a future release, I’ve got a slick new method that I’m working on to eliminate this hassle of a having a pre-define layout, allowing anyone to define their own custom structure as they see fit. But that’s all I can say for now.. I’m still working on making it just right.

Anywho, download WP Framework 0.1-RC2 and take it for a spin!

Webmaster Jam Session 08 and the Atlanta Tech Scene

October 3rd, 2008 under Events

Well this one came out of nowhere. Webmaster Jam Session 08, “A two day event with some of the best Web designers, developers, marketers and visionaries in the world,” right in my hometown!

I thought it couldn’t get any better than that until I checked out the speaker list… Jeff Croft, Dan Rubin, Chris Heilmann, Chris Pederick, Jina Bolton, Nick Finck… how did they convince all these amazing web professionals to come down to Atlanta?! It makes no sense… But that’s not all! Atlanta brews some pretty hot talented people too who are also going to be there: Todd Dominey, Paul Stamatiou and Christina Warren just to name a few. Okay enough with the name dropping… but seriously it’s going to be awesome!

On another note, I’ve been getting quiet involved in Atlanta’s tech scene recently I almost feel like I’ve been living under a rock for the past two years for not noticing how much is going on. Once my schedule opens up a bit more, I’ll be attending these groups on a regular base:

There’s also a new WordPress Meetup taking place in 2 weeks! It’s going to be the first so that should be interesting. I’m sure this city’s got enough talented brains to organize a future WordCamp Atlanta. But baby steps… baby steps.

On that same weekend, BarCamp Atlanta 2 is taking place which I really want to attend. The first rule almost feels intimidating giving that “Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. ” Giving the fact that I haven’t the sightless clue what I could possibly bring up if that was ever the case threw me back, but I’ll come up with something!
And finally, Startup Weekend 2! Get a bunch of highly motivated entrepreneurs in various profession fields and put them to the test-Build a startup in 54 hours. The idea has matured a lot since last year when I first heard about it. They’ve recently launched a new successful format (version 2.0):

“…that involves even more launches per weekend, more dedicated teams, recruiting by already established companies, and even no requirement to incorporate a company at the end of the weekend.”

That seems like a wise choice and in fact, it looks like it’s working out pretty well. Over 50+ companies have been born out of Startup Weekend but that number probably doesn’t compare to the amount of new professional contacts built from it. This year I signed up as a front-end developer and can’t wait to get my hands dirty in the next crazy idea that forms out of Startup Weekend! I’ll be sure to keep you posted on that one.

Hey, it’s Ptah

September 14th, 2008 under Updates

So I took a little break away from the web to get back in the “you’re a college student, not a freelancer” mode. So far so good. I’m only taking two courses this semester since my schedule was already jam-packed with two part-time jobs. While it’s manageable, I’m probably going to cut back on something (hopefully not school) and get back up to speed with all my projects and of course this blog.

It’s been well over a month since I started my new job as a cook (chef, what have you) at the Panther’s Den in downtown Atlanta. It’s a sports bar owned by Georgia State University but open to anyone and everyone. It’s the first of many projects GSU is trying to get off the ground in an attempt to bring their food services in-house instead of outsourcing to another company. Going on two months since we first opened doors and we’ve been getting nothing but rave reviews!

Panther's Den

It’s a great place to relax and hang out with the friends while watching ESPN, play on the golf simulator, or if you’re hungry, order some tasty food! We have everything from pizzas, to wings, to sandwiches, to salads, to chicken tenders, to fries that actually taste waaay better than Micky Ds! Sadly, that’s our entire menu right there! We just started so we’re expecting to see more added as time progresses.

Nevertheless, that limitation didn’t stop Martin and I from making food off of our own “private” menu. He likes to make bread sticks and stuff-crust pizzas. I’m, of course into pasta so I’ve been making some delicious spaghetti dishes! They’re bound to make it onto the official menu in the near future. Anyway, it’s been lot of fun thus far and a great change of pace. I was quickly becoming burnt out working in the office 5 days a week. Now it’s just 3, which is working out quiet well.

I’d also like to note that about two Sundays ago, I was appointed to Manager for the morning/evening (10-7) shift which shows that I must be doing something right. It’s always great to see your hard work pay off.

Brainstorming the Ultimate WordPress Theming Framework

August 12th, 2008 under My Projects

Efficiency is at the heart of all human beings. If given a common task to do, after a while they’re going to want to speed up that process, or find a better way to do it. - Ptah Dunbar (just made it up)

When I begin a new WordPress powered project, I always find it time consuming to set up the same files and folders for every project. It gets frustrating.

Then when it comes to converting a site from HTML/CSS to WordPress, there’s that dreaded process of stripping out a recent project to just it’s bare minimum. After that, I’ve got firefox open with 10+ tabs skimming over the Codex with pages like Template Tags, and the Developer’s Doc for reference. I demand a better way to do this.

I’ve tried to automate this tedious process before. A couple of months ago, I created a batch file that I’d click on whenever I start a new WordPress project. That script generates an entire directory structure for a WordPress theme. In addition, the .PHP/.CSS files that it generates are empty and prefixed with two underscores “__”. I started doing this because it served as a neat checklist visually showing me which files where modified and which ones needed editing.

Default WordPress Theme Directory

Now that’s all gravy, but it still doesn’t solve my second problem. I still have to look up WP functions and Template Tags in the Codex—that is, if I haven’t memorized them all by now!

So, that brings us to another approach I tired. Use a theme that’s already out there. A few notably themes already have a good foundations to build upon. Features like microformats, great SEO, localization, semantic classes, hooks, child-theme support and just a solid code base are exactly what I’m looking to support in the ultimate theming framework I’ve been brainstorming on.

I admire a few themers out there for this kind of work. People like Michael Heilemann and the rest of the team behind k2, Scott (sandbox), Ian (thematic), Ben and Chris (tarski), and a lot more who really push WordPress theming and just do something creative and different! However, all these guys have different goals that they’re accomplishing with their themes that are completely different from what I have in mind. So I’ll be adding to the hand full of great frameworks to build off of. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt having more options to choose from!

So I decided to fork my own theming framework dubbed “WP Framework“

So what exactly is this framework thingie? Well, the main goal I really wanted to accomplish with building this framework was to have a standard base to build all my WordPress related projects off of. Like I said before, I currently strip out snippets of code from recent projects I created since I learn new things as I make more and more themes. WP Framework will allow me to centralize all this action, which is a good thing!

The past two weeks I started crafting out a framework to serve as a bases for a solid WordPress (parent) theme and the results have already paid off twice! I’m using it for the next release for ptahdunbar.com (which is kinda why the release has been pushed back) and another for my department’s website which is currently getting a complete overhaul from static editing the html files to make changes to a complete WordPress powered CMS.

Another goal for this project was for it to be supper flexible and modular. This is where hooks and filters come into play. I’d like to really use widgets like never before to make for some creative uses. Lastly but not least, it’s got to be insanely fast. So the core will be squeaky clean from custom php spaghetti code and use built-in WordPress functions whenever possible.

How it stands out

One of the main design goals I wanted to achieve with WP Framework that differentiates it from other frameworks is the fact that it’s not styled. Those who constantly strip out unnecessary tags and wipe out the CSS styles understand where I’m coming from. Elliot Jay Stocks’ had the right mindset with his Starks theme.

Once I work out all the kinks and bugs, I’ll release the 0.1 release of WP Framework to the public as an open source project so everyone can benefit from this project.

Hopefully with all this, it’ll eliminate the repetitious task commonly done when creating a new WordPress theme and get you right into the development of site specific features. For that, I’m super excited!

I’ll be writing more about this once WordPress 2.7 comes out, stay tuned.

The Future of WordPress Theming

July 28th, 2008 under Notes

I don’t know about any other WordPress theme authors, but this functionality is what I’ll be aiming for when creating the holy grail of WordPress themes.

WPFreemium Theme 2.0 Released!

July 27th, 2008 under Wordpress

Now that school’s finally over (finals next week), I was finally able to put in some time to update the long over due WPFreemium theme 2.0. It fixes a lot of browser quirks and an overall face lift.

The fist release of this theme was a striped down version of what I had developed for bloggingtips so not everything was stable. With the 2.0 release, I’ve completely rewritten the HTML and CSS code from the ground up to give it a fresh start. In that process, I was getting acquainted with blueprint so I’ve still got some refactoring to do. Especially in the CSS.

I also made some very noticeably UI changes to the theme. Base on the feedback I was getting, several people were confused on how the three featured post section worked so I dropped it in replaced to the regular one stream of posts. In the future I might offer alternative layouts to bring back that custom layout but it’ll depend on demand. Also, I widgetized both the recent comments and author links sections so those are now pluggable anywhere instead of just showing up if you didn’t have widgets activated.

View the Demo or download WPFreemium Theme 2.0

Hope you like it!

Ptah Dunbar

My Awesome Blog