Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page

[jpelker]

From: http://item-9.com/2010/07/thesis-sho...-options-page/

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On June 6, 2010, I spoke at WordCamp Chicago about WordPress theme standardization. I argued that to move forward, WordPress needed to continue to assimilate third-party theme features, especially those that seemed to be repeated over and over throughout the theme building ecosystem.

A good example of this assimilation was integration of WooTheme’s menu functionality into WordPress 3.0. Of course, the finished product ended up being slightly different (and in my opinion, slightly better) than the original Woo menu, but the important point is that there is now a menu standard that has been readily adopted throughout the theme building community. Almost every new theme takes advantage of this functionality, so it becomes easier to build universally on top of this technology now that you have a set of conventions on which to work.

What does this all mean? It means that Thesis is now GPL compliant because of a hard-fought war of attrition and the dual licenses (which was Matt Mullenweg of WordPress’s idea, btw) really do seem a win for everybody:

1. Automattic (the company behind WordPress) and Matt don’t have to incur a PR nightmare by dragging Pearson to court to set an inherited license precedent (especially silly since so many other major theme authors already adopted the GPL last year). In fact, Matt kinda looks like a bad-ass (Ghandi-style, at least) for persuading Chris to go GPL, using just some well-formed arguments and a couple of online soapboxes, including the infamous tipping-point discussion on Mixergy.com.
2. Chris gets to keep making a fortune off of theme sales (around $2 million so far, according to Chris’s first Mixegy interview), since nobody is allow to resell his theme outright (not with his images and CSS, anyway).
3. Most importantly, the WordPress community can now use Thesis’s functionality in other themes, and hopefully, take what many consider to be a standard-bearing theme admin panel, and turn it into the actual WordPress standard theme admin panel.

As an active ThemeForest downloader, I’ve seen dozens of different options panels, and while some are excellent, most are imitations of older versions of admin panels from the major theme developers, like WooThemes. Imagine, though, if every theme had the same easily updatable options page–making customizations a snap, as well as allowing you to reuse code (or create plugins) that added functionality to each and every theme options page right off the bat.

Another obvious feature that comes with these standards and conventions is exporting/importing. If all future admin panels shared the same hooks, actions, filters and even input id’s, you could easily transfer settings from one site to the next without fear of corrupting your database.


As you can tell, I’m glad to see the walls of proprietary licensing finally fall away from long-time WordPress theme holdouts, like Thesis. There is work to be done, though, and the next step is taking this newest open-sourced theme and integrating either into the core of WordPress, or maybe even into a core theme admin plugin like the import/export function did in WordPress 3.0. One way or another, we need to create efficiencies by aiming to standardize as much of the WordPress backend experience as possible. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d like to one day see WordPress developers focus on web design once again;) If Thesis can become the de facto admin panel, we’ll be well on our way.

[jpelker]

Anybody who adds their comments to my blog as well will be greatly appreciated!

[Ryan]

Why would you want to push people into something like Thesis? It's horridly complex for the average user. The current theme system is massively superior IMO.

[jpelker]

Why would you want to push people into something like Thesis? It's horridly complex for the average user. The current theme system is massively superior IMO.

I think that we need a standard theme options page, even if it is to be a core plugin. There's no reason for developers to build 1,000 iterations of the same functionality. Thesis has a pretty decent take on what an options page should look like, so why not make it the starting point for a default?

[dancole]

The problem with the Theme Options Page of today is that it is representing a multitude of choices with a text-based form. It requires the person filling out the form to know what's going on at a much more technical level than most people are willing to commit to. In order to make the Theme Options Page standard, it would have to go through a revolution like the GUI of the personal computer, i.e. from text-based to graphic.

I think the work Daryl Koopersmith is doing is more likely to make it into WordPress core or into a core plugin. Check out the Elastic Theme Editor or this new GSoC project, CSS Editor. These have a long way to go, but their more acceptable as a way for a non-web designer to edit their theme without knowing a lot of technical stuff.

Even if a text-based theme options page was the way to go, I think starting from scratch would be the way to go. I do not believe Thesis's Options Page was ever a big step forward and that other themes could be just as good a place to start from.

[Michelle L]

I saw the elastic theme editor and it does look great. I can't wait to get a chance to play around with it. One thing that irks me is when each theme designer incorporates his/her own design into the options panels. As a start, if everyone at least made their options panels look like the WordPress backend, it would make for a more consistent user experience.

[Ryan]

I don't think options pages are complex enough to justify their own framework.

I'd have thought hooking into something like Hybrid or Genesis with a child theme would be more sensible as you could make use of their options page that way.

[andrea_r]

There's no reason for developers to build 1,000 iterations of the same functionality.

No, there isn't - but most devs like to do things THEIR way not someone else's way. ;)

Way way back in the mists of WP history, someone DID come out with The Definitive Options Page code and for a while, many theme devs used it. eventually the code improved, and programmers tweaked things until they had stuff done the way they each wanted.

[wpmuguru]

"Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page"

The CSS and JS used by the default theme must also be GPL or similarly licensed to be distributed with WP. No theme with a split license could be used as a default theme for that reason.

[Ryan]

"Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page"

The CSS and JS used by the default theme must also be GPL or similarly licensed to be distributed with WP. No theme with a split license could be used as a default theme for that reason.

The thread is not about using Thesis as the default theme.