Excitement Over 1.3’s Theme Engine

Thanks for your detailed explanation, rboren. I think themes are going to be a terrific addition to wp. Great work, all!

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

I don’t remember saying that, but I do remember people attacking WordPress, myself, and Kubrick because of confusion as to what elements were being incorporated. The theme system, which is relatively new, did not exist at the time of the previous thread though aspects of it had come up in previous brainstorms. Documentation surrounding how to implement themes will begin when everything is finalized. Discussion about the development of the theme system belongs on the hackers list. I’m not sure what you mean about private plans or no dialogue. There has been lots of dialogue, the code is all out in the open, and the changes already in place make things like your Gemini template a million times easier to package and distribute.
Mog, thanks for your comments. WordPress themes don’t use cookies so maybe your switching issues are with some other code?
Anonymous, the way the files are divided isn’t final yet and won’t be required. 1.2 template files should work just fine with a single line change to the way comments are called.
Winnie, any code included with WordPress will include full localization hooks allowing for complete translation into most any language.

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.

…and that’s why I love Ryan. ??

Thanks for the info Ryan! It’s good to know that archive.php, category.php, etc. can simply be part of the theme by dropping them in the theme directory.
I’m hacking around a new theme myself and I need just one quick confirmation: Is a theme’s index.php also going to into the theme directory? Meaning: is the theme’s alternative index.php going to be called instead of the vanilla index.php when present? I found this hard to deduct from the current nightly code ??

Muffinboy – I am glad you are here. How do we get a theme running. Clearly opening a themes dir and putting in a dir with an index will not activate in the presentation page. So how is it activated?. I just can not get my head around this. Does ANYBODY know. ?

It amazes me that people are demanding answers and how to descriptions on in development software. It wouldn’t be fair to even begin to describe 1.3 as beta ready.
Let the devs keep working on it rather than spending lots of time trying to answer everyones questions on *how* to use it. If your wanting to play with it now, I think it’s safe to say that you should be prepared to spend a good amount of time digging around and learning. And then, all that work might be for naught because the devs could decide on a better way to do something or can features and modifications alltogether.
On the other hand, it would be nice if the CVS notes had a little more detail to them. Many of them are pretty well useless. If Matt and Ryan would be so kind to spend a couple minutes typing up notes to their commits, I sure would be grateful. Might also help to curb some of this anger floating around…
This is turning into chaos, everyone is wanting to run 1.3 now and know how to use it. It’s crazy because it has been this way since 1.2 was a release candidate. Long before a single line of code was even written for 1.3.
Can’t we all just relax a just little bit?

Well that seems a good idea. But from where I am standing there is a growing feeling that the basic set up is pretty much buttoned down already.

Lets just wait a bit and see where it goes. It’s awfully preemptive to get excited/angry/upset about something in development.
If the release candidate comes out and things are really borked, then I’m sure Matt & Ryan will be quite happy to take 1.3 back into development and work on getting 1.3 right the first time – instead of with 1.4.

Well the thing is the cat is now half out of the bag. What some of us who are interested in theme design would like to do is at least try it now so we can give feedback before it is too late. I personally can think of at least one alternative structure but I can’t articulate it because I am not sure what the current model does or doesn’t do, and I cant be certain that it doesnt already have the functionality which I believe is important. Many other folks might possibly also feel the same way. Surely you understand that ?

I agree with unoamigo: At this stage the devs are obviously still throwing ideas around and when they’re ready to involve the rest of us, I’m sure they will. If they want feedback, they’ll ask for it ??
I would be very surprised to see an official release before Xmas, so that will give everyone plenty of time to figure out how any new features might work.

Feedback is appreciated from anyone who wants to look over the code and try it out. In fact, we’re getting plenty of feedback from those who are working with the code, and we have incorporated many patches and suggestions.
There will be plenty of time for everyone to look over this and every other new feature before the release of 1.3. I’ll say it again, “We are in ALPHA.” There is no need for all of the hand-wringing.
It’s possible that the themes feature might not even make it into 1.3. So, everybody chill. This tiresome speculation and conspiracy mongering is silly. It’s also de-motivating to those who are trying to improve WordPress. I sometimes dread committing new stuff to CVS because of the paranoid ranting that shows up on the forums and in my inbox as a result.

Root,
I understand that. The thing is that their design is not complete. So you can’t really tell what the current model is, what it does or will do. Let alone really try it out yet since all of the code simply is not written yet.
“Too late” is simply once it is released. Before then it will hit release candidate, I think at that point it is fair game to give the design a good ringer. At that point in time it is also fair to expect the developers to articulate deeper on the points and capabilities of the design. This could even happen before the first release candidate.
Now if you want to articulate your own model, that is fair too. It could be very helpful. You don’t really need to see their full model before doing so. It’s more than cool to spell out how you think a theme system could be created. It’s not a waste of your effort to articulate something that already exists. It means other people reading your design will understand it better. If it coincides with what exists or what is in the works, then that gives Matt and Ryan a pat on the back.
At the moment though, everyone is tearing into the “design” which is neither fully developed or articulated publicly.
I can see wanting to try to save some time by hashing out more of the design with other people – such as ourselves, before coding. The problem however becomes that when you put too many minds into something then everything slows down. More time is spent defending and articulating bits and pieces of the design model than is necessary. Especially when in many cases either idea will work equally well.
Now, I think I’m going to head back to my tent, type up some WordPress entries, and if I still have a smidgen of power – install the latest nightly. ??

I’m going to get blasted for this and it might even get taken down, I don’t know.
I’m new to wordpress and I have to say that I find some posts almost comical. It appears there are two camps on this board. Kubrick promoters and Root promoters. I don’t hear too much from the kubrick promoters, but what I do see is that one camp rants/raves against the other camp and the evil empire and then promotes his own templates – and tells many people that their layouts are “borked”.
I wonder if many people even know where that term originated? Think Supreme Court nominee. Anyway, if you look at this individual’s site using firefox 1.0 you can slightly see the main content are of the site bleeding under the footer and the site currently doesn’t validate. Is that considered “borked”?
So, come on people, give it a rest. With all of the different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions, nothing is going to be perfect. Use whatever layout you want. But for pete’s sake, at least agree that the WP engine is pretty darn cool and best of all, FREE! In my opinion it is pretty easy to sit back and complain. If you don’t like WP, go out and create your own blog engine, package it and then give it away free and then deal with the people that don’t like what you are doing.
Oh, and I’m in now way associated with WP other than I started using it a few months ago.
I appreciate the effort the development team puts into the product and glad it’s out there. I haven’t even considered using MT or Eblogger, and while it is in my control, won’t.
Thanks for listening.

Anon, I wondered about that term, too. Didn’t find it at dictionary.com, but did find it at urbandictionary.com:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bork&r=d

Yeah, Robert Bork was a Supreme Court nominee by Regean in ’87 who was shot down by the Dems. It coined a phrase that is used when other nominees are voted against, “borked”. As in, W’s nominee for Labor Secretary was borked.
You have to be old to remember that. And, if memory serves me right, I think some tried to embarrass Bork by revealing that he had rented some “pornographic” videos – which would be extremely damaging to any conservative. Hence, he was borked. Torpedoed.
As Paul Harvey would say, “And know you know the rest of the story. Good day.”

All I can say is – I looked at kittna’s site and I am in LOVE. Did you see how she has all of her icons meticulously placed in the screenshot of her desktop????