Genesis Framework - Your thoughts?

[slee]

I have considered using a framework but never go around to using one do they have any real benefit? I have always used a basic theme and the added in my own code in the fucntions.php file and gone from there.

[Michelle L]

I guess it just depends on whether or not you'd find it useful. Frameworks, while they can take some time to learn initially, can save you time since you don't have to start from scratch with every new project.

[slee]

i guess ill have to have a dig around one and see what it can offer me

[Ryan]

Frameworks don't cut down on development time directly, they cut down on the time required to maintain existing themes.

Otherwise you would just hack up the theme directly rather than mess around with child themes, hooks etc.

[greenshady]

Well, this was getting to be quite a long thread. I've been out of the loop for a couple of weeks and missed out on the discussion. There were a couple of comments that I wanted to respond to.

So here's a dumb question (maybe just for the sake of discussion?): what differentiates a "theme framework" from a "parent theme"?

I don't really consider an advanced parent theme a "framework" at all. But, the term has kind of caught on in the community, so we call them frameworks. Admittedly, I'm as much to blame as anyone for the confusion. I'll probably write a blog post at some point covering my thoughts on this in more detail, but here's the short version. ;)

Two actual frameworks are Carrington and WP Framework, which I don't think were mentioned at all in this thread. You use these to build themes (not child themes). Basically, they offer a set of conventions for extending WordPress and giving theme developers a lot of flexibility without all the hassle of having to code it all. Think of frameworks as the "logic" behind the theme, not the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.

The Hybrid Framework (not the theme) is the same way. It's this folder called "library" that lives in the Hybrid parent theme. What the Hybrid theme does is load this framework and use its conventions to build the theme. Essentially, you could plug the Hybrid Framework into any theme or start building a theme from scratch with it.

Confused yet? There are two different Hybrids:

• Hybrid framework (or Hybrid core)
• Hybrid parent theme

The first is used for building parent themes. The second is a parent theme built with the framework.

But, 99% (guestimate) of users aren't interested in frameworks. They're not developers. So, it's been pretty pointless for me to actually release the framework as a standalone download (though I do plan to release it at some point). The Hybrid parent theme suits most of my users just fine.

So, here's what we have.

• Parent themes (pretty much any theme).
• Advanced parent themes (these are what we call "frameworks" in the WP community today).
• Frameworks (used to build [parent] themes).

is it the added functionality (as in, additional functions and hooks)? Is it the extent of back-end configuration/control? Something else?

I wouldn't consider additional hooks a requirement for framework status at all. A framework could be something like an elegant template hierarchy with which to build themes.

Administration settings? The more you have, the less likely I'd consider you to have a framework, at least in the traditional PHP framework sense. If you're going to have 600+ theme options, do us all a favor and call your theme a "Smart Theme" or something. ;)

Same here. Having said that, based on several of Justin's comments, I think he probably included them so people using Hybrid would have examples to work from (not that he has said specifically that).

Yep, that's what they're for if needed. In general, I'm not a big fan of overwriting complete templates though. Most of the time, a quick function in the theme functions file does the job much better. It's rare that I see someone actually needing to overwrite a whole template when using the Hybrid parent theme.

[lori]

I really like working with Genesis and find that it speeds up development time a lot. The fact that there is a team of awesome developers continuously improving it, updating it, and making sure it is secure saves me lot of time even after the sites are built. I also find that it does not get in the way like some frameworks do. It is very easy to apply any design to a child theme. For basic quick sites, I can often get by with just editing the css and functions files and adding images. It has some convenient options in the admin, but is not overkill. The only downside is that the documentation is very incomplete. Would be nice to have a way to look up hooks/functions without having to keep the core genesis files open for reference.

[syedbalkhi]

If I have to pick a commercial framework, it would be Genesis (hands down). Headway is another good solution for clients who like more visual control.

[Ryan]

If I have to pick a commercial framework, it would be Genesis (hands down). Headway is another good solution for clients who like more visual control.

What do you prefer about it over Thematic, Hybrid, Thesis etc.?

[leadlungbetty]

Thanks for this thread everyone. I've been looking for a sane debate on this.