Ptah Dunbar » WP Framework

I’m pleased to announce the new release of WP Framework 0.3

Ptah Dunbar — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:35:18 +0000

I just released the latest version of WP Framework today. This release was essential for laying the groundwork for future features and innovations to come. And now that WP Framework is somewhat mature enough, I plan on dedicating more of my time towards actually building WordPress themes on top of the framework. They should serve as a way to learn how to best take advantage of the framework and show you best practices.

WP Framework 0.1 is out!

Ptah Dunbar — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:07:10 +0000

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!

Wanna play with WP Framework?

Ptah Dunbar — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:05:27 +0000

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:

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 and take it for a spin!

Brainstorming the Ultimate WordPress Theming Framework

Ptah Dunbar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:06:45 +0000

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.