Excitement Over 1.3’s Theme Engine

Less than a month ago Matt was denying publicly that any part of Kubrick was going to be in WP at all.

Well it would be useful if theme developers were informed what the API architecture is so that they can plan ahead. Kubrick is the only one because nobody else knows what a *theme* is meant to consist of what files it uses and what the conventions are. And if the devs had dealt with the real issues in the thread from hell instead of flaming the participants we would not be in this mess.

Root,
THE HORSE IS DEAD.

Meaning WHAT ?

And NM that is link to someone *upgrading* to WP 1.2. Cool huh ?

Root, the theme was not put together by the Kubrick author nor was it packaged with WordPress. Obviously the person who put the theme together knows a bit about where WP is in the developement cycle….but anyone can that follows the Dev mailing list. Don’t be defensive….the theme engine will make make your templates just as available as the Kubrick theme.
https://binarybonsai.com/archives/2004/09/19/kubrick-for-other-systems/
The great thing about the theme engine is that it doesn’t require the current base template to be broken….It replaces everything is one theme swoop. IMO, its the best alternative that should make everyone happy.
NuclearMoose, thanks for the link.

Well sadly BB is borked at the moment so I cant read the link. There is nothing defensive about it. Theme devs of all hues want to know what the architecture is. for 1.3. Where is that info published ?

I think the idea of themes is great cause it would solve the problem of wanting to vary the structure of the index page as with skins one has to keep it the same or add in a whole bunch of divs not called by the different stylesheets as is done at CSSZenGarden. And of course themes allows for adding other pages as Kubrick does. I did notice that they are only changable via the admin area which is a disadvantage if you want people to be able to skin it to their liking.
I am wondering how themes works with mod rewrite. I am using 1.3-alpha-3 9/21 nightly and my skins work with one caveat, sometimes when I go from https://www.mindofmog.net to mindofmog.net the old skin is called, persistent cookies that won’t go away.
Might try it on a test site to get the feel of it.
Don’t know what a theme is, download b2evolution and take a peek in their skins directory. Note the similarity to Kubrick, a stylesheet and whatever files you want in your theme, as few or as many as you want. Yes, you have to get into the php designing one if you want to have fun but old skins should work too.

In looking at the Kubrick files, I don’t think there’s any special hooks or anything needed to get a theme working….except that the files be loaded in a sub directory named for the theme…..ie, wp-content/themes/mytheme/(files)
What I would do is create a test install. Break one of your templates into the four parts for the index, header, footer and sidebar using the 1.3alpha php and see if it’ll load. I bet it will.
I would be seriously interested to know if it does.

Thanks. Sweet, I must redo my footer into sidebar and footer then play a bit. This will be fun.

Kubrick is a great theme, however, all the hard-coding makes the translation into other languages terribly difficult. Is that going to change too?

The theme code has been discussed a bit on the hackers list and on IRC. We haven’t published anything about the architecture becuase we’re not ready for everyone to jump on it and then complain that it doesn’t work. ?? Of course, the code is there for all to see and many have already worked out how to create themes. Several people from the hackers list have been helping to shake out the bugs. I turned Kubrick into my reference theme because it exercises the limits of the new template and theme code. I also happen to like it. A Kubrick theme has not been committed to CVS. It is simply my testing vehicle. I have toyed with the idea of committing it to CVS and making the theme manager say “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave” whenever you try to switch to another theme. You know, just to give everyone something to talk about.
So, basically, a theme is a style.css and an index.php in a subdirectory of wp-content/themes. How you organize it from there is up to you. You can include() whatever you want. If your theme provides certain special templates such as archive.php, category.php, author.php, etc. those will be loaded for an archive query, a category query, and an author query, respectively. Or, you can handle everything in index.php and use is_archive(), is_category(), is_author(), etc. As the theme author, it’s up to you.
Look at the bottom of wp-blog-header.php in the “Template redirection” block to see which templates are loaded for each query type.
If your theme is a stylesheet only theme that uses the template from another theme, you need provide only style.css. Via the theme header (which resembles the plugin header) you can point to the template required by your stylesheet.
As the theming matures, more details will be forthcoming. In the meantime, check out the code in wp-blog-header and in themes.php and admin-functions.php, if you are so inclined. Look at the Kubrick for 1.3 theme as an example. Or, you can spin conspiracy theories. Whatever you prefer. ??

Well I have been reading the hackers list for quite some time. And I have always had the feeling that we were at the butt end of an undisclosed private dialogue which was taking place somewhere else. The last I heard Matt had some plans but wasnt sharing them. This is making it very difficult for people supporting WP with alternatives themes, styles, interfaces whatever. There has been do dialogue.

Yawn.
https://tinyurl.com/4twnk

The code is out there. People who wish to contribute and enter dialogue are already doing so. Remember, we are very much in alpha, so it is mainly those who follow CVS and contribute code who are involving themselves. It is a self-selecting community.
All plans and goals are here. If you want to work on any of those things, have at it. Submit your work to the hackers list and/or Matt.