Comments on: What is the Future of WordPress themes?

By: Tom Gurney

Tom Gurney — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:00:59 +0000

Wordpress have a hard task offering packages which cover such a broad base of users from complete newbies to guys like yourself. Personally, some kind of wordpress.com options for designers like myself would be much appreciated, beyond just CSS control. I have no option at the moment but to host my blogs myself in the future or face restrictive constraints.

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:04:39 +0000

I agree that it is our responsibility to educate users on WP basics, but I don’t consider hooks & filters to be basics by a long stretch of the imagination… I’d rather focus on teaching our users how to use Firebug to tweak their CSS for example, as there is probably more value in that.

Remember again, that most of our users are typical end-users. So they’d only use their WP knowledge on the site that they purchased the theme for. They’re not suddenly going to become WP devs with knowledge of widget-coding, hooks, filters etc, because that is not their job.

By: Ptah Dunbar

Ptah Dunbar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:31:16 +0000

Currently, the core developers are working on integrating the new theme features into core first. On WP Tavern, Jeff wrote that Jane Wells said:

...that they are working on revamping the Widget Management area and at this point, they may put the foundation in place in 2.8 and then finish it off in WordPress 2.9 - #

Automattic seems to have a plan for how they want to tackle revamping widgets so I'd stay tuned in with the development blog and keep and eye on the trac timeline for any widget related commits. If anything, just check out this page to learn how to contribute to WordPress.

By: Deryk

Deryk — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:31:27 +0000

Really good post.

The idea about improving the widget interface is excellent. But who is actually working on this with the 2.8 team? I just downloaded trunk and the widget interface is identical to 2.7. How can the community contribute?

By: Nathan Rice

Nathan Rice — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:58:24 +0000

@Adii,
Coming from someone, like you, who is in the position of supporting end-users on a day-to-day basis, I have to agree. The most valuable users — that is, NEW WordPress users — are hardly at a place where they can understand this kind of thing. If we choose to make the process of modification more difficult, the support after the sale has to be top-notch. Some users do look at the screen with a blank start when you mention FTP, so Actions and Filters are gonna blow their mind.

IMO, the premium theme vendors have the greatest responsibility here, because we actually have the time and money to go through the education process with users who don’t understand even basic WordPress functions.

By: Idealien

Idealien — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:50:01 +0000

I still however think that you’re miss-judging the learning curve involved for the users. Some of our users need their hand-held through the theme installation process, which means that they will NOT understand hooks, filters and child themes. That is the typical end-user however…

Theme Frameworks are something a handful of recognized industry leaders are willing to devote their time and energy to. As the re-evaluations of the 2008 Future of Wordpress has shown, a lot of the concepts being discussed may end up being very far off the mark. It also isn’t being suggested that the theme system for Wordpress be modified so that every theme MUST use the concepts being discussed. It could end up being to WooThemes advantage to stay consistent with what has led them to be as successful as you have been up to this point.

However, just because the typical user skill level today might not be receptive to the concepts of hooks, etc does not mean it will / has to be the case tomorrow. I’m sure at some point early in your experience with Wordpress you were ecstatic at being able to change the colours in Kubrick.

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:43:21 +0000

Thanks for amending Nathan’s views on the post.

I still however think that you’re miss-judging the learning curve involved for the users. Some of our users need their hand-held through the theme installation process, which means that they will NOT understand hooks, filters and child themes. That is the typical end-user however…

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:58:43 +0000

That theme still ends up in the hands of the end-user and a framework + child theme setup makes it much harder for them to customize the functionality of that theme then (sure, design changes are made easier though). I'd then like to quote Nathan's comment:

I can’t help but agree with you there. Frameworks — even the best frameworks, with the best documentation — are hard to modify. Here’s the process for the framework I’m making.

By: Ptah Dunbar

Ptah Dunbar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:49:17 +0000

@adii, the only thing I can find regarding nathan's views on this is (emphasis mines):

I do believe they (theme frameworks) are a end-all solution (potentially). By bundling Framework + child-theme, you are solving a LOT of problems (a lot more than it creates at least). #

If I'm missing something, I'll be sure to update the post. Either way, you missed the part where I said:

...theme frameworks are meant for theme authors first, not end-users

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:31:03 +0000

Well done for referencing Nathan’s comments on my Framework Validity post. Just sorry that you fail to reference the comment where he actually agrees that a theme framework isn’t necessarily the answer the average WP theme user is looking for…