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!
It’s definitely not another Thematic and I’m glad it isn’t (no disrespect to Ian). Each framework should have its own purpose in order to serve what it was intended for. Before you implement future upgrades for WPF, consider WPF’s target users. Are you catering to experienced theme authors or beginners?
A framework with too many features becomes its own theme with a lot of nice-to-haves (but useless) instead of serving as a blank slate for its niche, which is why the future should be focused on niche frameworks not the best framework.
If you’re focusing on bare minimums then don’t upgrade unless new useful/better techniques, which majority of the blogs should adopt, emerges.
And if you’re focusing on the bare minimums and efficiency, remove the credits in the header and style file. Also, don’t release it as a theme.
Good starting point so far. I’m looking forward to what you can do without ending up with a beefy theme. I hope you’ll make new features optional.
Hey SP, I *really* appreciate your feedback and thoughts for WP Framework and already made a small change based on what you suggested, it means a lot coming from you.
And I know what you mean by figuring out the target audience, that thought comes up in to mind every time I think about a new addition or feature I’m glad you address that. In a perfect world WPF would cater to both developer and non-techies (bloggers) but that’s not going to happen through one framework (i think). More on that later though because I might have a solution to get them both in. But for now as WPF is in it’s infancy, beginners can easily get it and (hopefully) follow along as the Framework matures. (hopefully I answered your question. in short until I figure the above problem out, WPF will be focus on advanced users)
However, your going to have to elaborate on what you mean by not releasing it as a theme. I’m not sure I get where your coming from.
As far as getting beefy, that’s been one of my top priorities since day one. Trust me when I tell you, boastness will be dealt with if that ever becomes an issue. I’m very strict on what goes in the core (in fact, I removed IE6 png fix a few days ago).
You’ll get a better understanding of where I’m coming from once the first release comes out.
I thought the link and powered by line were fine. Rather, the html comment in the header and descriptions in the style file are unnecessary.
Sticking with the idea of bare minimums, releasing it as a theme requires name, description, and little stuff that comes with a functional theme.
Every time you upgrade, your framework users will have to remove the little details to end up with a fill in the blank version of your framework.
To take as much as hassle out of the process as possible, don’t release it as a theme. Leave stuff like the names, description, version number out of it. Allow people like me to simply fill in the blanks.
I know it sounds like a stupid idea, but I’ve never seen a fill in the blank or pluggable feature type of framework before. You’re in position (early stages) to do that so I’m suggesting it now before it’s too late.
Thx for considering my feedback instead of taking it as pure bs =)
Your talking about the
metatag right? If so, I put that in there so I’ll have some kind of indicator if the theme was built on WPF. I thought that should help during trouble shooting and support. Considering the built by/powered by inline comment is there, maybe the meta tag is a little overkill.. but I thought of it as a fall back in case someone decided to remove the inline comment for whatever reason. (thinking outloud) I guess it’s either one or the other.I think I get what you mean now. So your saying name, description, author, author uri should be left blank in styles.css?
As far as not releasing it as a theme, I’ll try that and see how that works out. It seems logical given the fact that I’m developing this for people who know what their doing (read: advance users) so a link to the SVN repository should suffice for now.
Thanks again for some value feedback. I need to rethink the theme development process as much as possible and abstract a few things in order for everyone to benefit from it.
I agree with Small Potato as far as keeping it simple. If you know some php it might be a good idea to code a theme compiler - where people can write in their own classes and id’s for the layout. But this is looking pretty cool. I’ll take a look some more when I get home.