By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
WordPress consultant, Konstantin Kovshenin has published an excellent guide describing what theme/plugin lock-in is and how to avoid it. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time but have never been able to put into words for a post. The biggest culprit in my opinion when it comes to lock-ins are themes, especially commercial ones. These themes not only come with features that make it unique, those features sometimes store or alter data in a way that makes it very difficult to switch themes or even upgrade WordPress. The first comment on that post by Diane illustrates my point exactly.
This problem is even more pervasive than articulated here. The theme options of many commercial themes create functionality unique to that theme and then if you want to make a change, boy are you screwed. We see this problem with clients all the time.
Looking back at my history of using WordPress, choosing the right theme based on looks, options, and functionality was one of the toughest decisions I would have to make. I think I’ve only switched themes five times or less for both my personal site and WPTavern.com. Quite frankly, switching themes is a giant pain in the ass. Widgets become messed up, the layout is screwed up and although I like themes with options, I have to read the manual to figure out how to get the layout I like or at least, witnessed on the demo theme. Once I have a theme configured both functionally and aesthetically, I try not to do anything to disturb it. I get sick of the layout sometimes but the thought of switching themes and how much work that entails always settles me down into sticking with the current implementation.
Definitely read the comments at the end of the article as Mike Schinkel carries on an interesting conversation on ways or methods on which this entire situation could be improved.
Posted in Plugins, Themes | Tagged lock-in, Plugins, Themes |
By Jeffro on December 20, 2011
It was announced yesterday that Matt Mullenweg will be the one to oversee the development of Twenty Twelve, the new default theme for WordPress 3.4. Here is a list of things that the WordPress core team would like to see make it into Twenty Twelve:
- single post/permalink view with post formats is needed
- variable height header image
- mobile version
- default to static front page (will need a function in core to auto-choose)
- editor styles the same as front end.
- avoid clever things that aren’t super-useful (like ephemera widget)
- start with 2011 as base for code (or 2010, which has gotten more updates and had more eyes on it)
- no featured image in header
- by default – no header image
If anything, it looks like Twenty Twelve will be simpler than Twenty Eleven. I wonder if the theme will be blue with rounded corners, just for old times sake?
Posted in Themes | Tagged 2012, default, matt, Themes |
By Jeffro on October 26, 2011
Chip Bennett is currently in the middle of creating an updated version of the template hierarchy diagram which shows the structure of how a page is displayed. The new diagram is a bit more detailed than the old one. These diagrams are an excellent way to learn about Template Tags in WordPress as well as visually see the process for determining which page is displayed.
Old Template Diagram
New Template Diagram
Chip Bennett is looking for feedback on his version of the template diagram. You can either comment on this article with your feedback or give him a shout out on twitter via @Chip_Bennett.
Posted in Themes | Tagged diagram, tags, templates, Themes |
By Jeffro on October 25, 2011
I stumbled across this theme the other day called Tachyon by RocketTheme and noticed that is has 70 widget positions. That is insane. I can’t imagine how much of a burden or a nightmare it would be to manage something like that from the back-end of WordPress as just having 15 or so widgets can become cumbersome. This link will show you all of the various widget spots complete with there variations. Check out the following image which shows a blueprint of where all of the widget spots are located.
Posted in Themes | Tagged design, rockettheme, Themes, widgets |
By Jeffro on October 24, 2011
Great checklist created by WPBeginner of things to do before switching to a different theme. Out of everything they presented, number three hit home for me. After using a new theme for a few months, I decided to look at my Google Analytics and discovered that no stats were being saved from the date I switched my theme to the present. I obviously forgot to add the tracking code to the new theme. OOPS. ∞
Posted in Themes | Tagged checklist, resources, Themes, wpbeginner |
By Jeffro on October 19, 2011
I didn’t know this was an actual problem until I read the advice on WPBeginner.com. Apparently, some WordPress themes can break when Skype changes a phone number into a number you can dial with Skype. The fix is a simple one liner that you add to the HEAD section of the theme. Personally, I don’t use Skype to call out and change my options to prevent the over riding phone numbers in the first place. ∞
Posted in Themes | Tagged phone, skype, Themes |
By Jeffro on October 6, 2011
With the passing of Steve Jobs, memorials and tributes are showing up all over the web. While BoingBoing.net seems to be one of the more popular tributes, I’m happy to inform you that if you’re using WordPress, you too can join in with the same tribute of making your site look like the Mac OS via a freely available WordPress theme called Retro MacOS.
Tribute Based On Retro MacOS WordPress Theme
According to the release post, this was Stuart Browns first WordPress theme which was created during the days of WordPress 2.1.2. However, it appears to work fine for the latest version of WordPress if BoingBoing.net is anything to go by.
I wonder if via this theme, WordPress users can celebrate a new holiday called Steve Jobs day by having our site look like the retro MacOS every year on October 5th. I think it would be pretty interesting to browse some of the largest sites using WordPress when they use this theme just to see how it looks. At the very least, this is one way WordPress users can pay tribute to a great man.
Posted in Themes | Tagged mac os, steve jobs, theme, tribute |
By Jeffro on April 5, 2011
Roots is a starter theme for WordPress based on HTML5 Boilerplate, Blueprint CSS or 960.gs and Starkers. One of the cool features of this starter theme is the implementation of CodeMirror into the HTML post editor which spruces things up. While not extensive, their gallery shows a couple of nice looking sites built on Roots. ∞
Posted in Themes | Tagged framework, roots, Themes |
By Jeffro on March 29, 2011
TwentyTen Extended – add Color to the Default WordPress Theme – TwentyTen child theme that makes it easy to change the colors of various elements without editing or writing code. ∞
Posted in Themes | Tagged child themes, Themes, twentyten |
By Jeffro on March 29, 2011
I’m not sure if you noticed as much as I have but there seems to be a commercial theme sorter popping up on every corner. At least, that’s the impression I get as I’ve routinely been receiving emails lately from people letting me know about the launch of their theme sorter. The newest one to launch which has over 500 themes from 19 sellers listed with a goal to reach over 1,000 by this summer is called ThemeSorter. ThemeSorter provides different ways to browse through their listing such as color, specific niche, ratings, styles, etc.
Talk about an easy business model. There are so many commercial themes being developed by established companies with brand new commercial theme businesses opening shop every week that it makes sense to create a directory of sorts to try and make sense of everything. The directory has to be easy to browse, contain affiliate links to their respective theme authors and hope people go through you to purchase the theme. Special deals from those sellers wouldn’t hurt either.
The question I have about all these different theme sorters is which one will gain critical mass? That is, which one will end up having a community of people or users that rate and review themes similar to customers reviewing items that have purchased from Amazon? Which one will be the go-to place that has the largest and most legit listing? I’ve heard many people request that there be a place similar to the WordPress.org theme repository but for commercial themes and these theme sorters seem to fit the bill although they don’t contain any files to download. They are informative only.
If nothing else, these commercial theme aggregation sites make for a good place to get inspiration or find out what the latest designs are from the commercial theme ecosystem surrounding WordPress. How many of you have actually used one of these sites to purchase a commercial theme?
Posted in Themes | Tagged commercial, sorting, Themes |
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