Making a theme editor

  • I’m launching an opensource project to make a WordPress editor for themes, suitable for nonprogrammers. To start, I need ideas about interface and functionality. I will also need contributors.

    I’m a programmer, but most bloggers aren’t. Most bloggers would like to customize their own themes, but they need to learn programming (relatively simple programming, but still) to do the customizing. The alternative seems to be buying expensive software like Dreamweaver.

    To solve this problem, I’d like to propose the creation of an open source project to create a tool for interactive template editing. The goal is for this tool to be really simple to use, and powerful enough to handle tweaking the typical theme packages out there.

    I want to keep things simple, so a basic tool can be produced in say a month. People can extend it after that as they wish.

    To start this project, I’d like to hear from ordinary bloggers who have ideas of

    • what kind of interface we should build, and
    • what kind of tweaks do you want to do

      • Aside from that, I’m interested in people who want to help work on the project.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • You mean like this:
    https://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/

    or this:
    https://www.wordpressthemegen.com/

    It’s an admirable goal. Many have tried, few have nailed it.

    Here’s another link to look over: https://freshpursuits.com/canvas/

    Ooh, sweet!

    Thread Starter alanbaljeu

    (@alanbaljeu)

    yvo’s site is cool but much too basic. wordpressthemegen looks better, but I don’t think it’s there either. What about adding or removing a section of a page? What about resizing?

    Canvas looks much more interesting. I’ll have to check it out.
    Edit: I’ve tried Canvas now and it reaallly looks interesting but…. I can’t get the dragndrop layout system to work, and the forums don’t work and all kinds of stuff doesn’t work on the website. Is anyone else having better success?

    Canvas looks pretty dormant now, doesn’t it? It was quite a deal a year or so ago. Lots of potential but it was a bit finicky…

    Well. Alan, maybe this is the perfect time for you to swoop in and do a “cleanup on aisle 9” and corner this market. It would seem to me that with all the clueless newbies out there with shiny new WordPress blogs and sites, there would be a nice market for this. But trouble is quite a few of them are cheapskates so… still… timing is everything. ??

    Thread Starter alanbaljeu

    (@alanbaljeu)

    I don’t think I’m looking for a market or anything. It seems to me the thing to do is update Canvas and see if we can get it working. It’s licensed Creative Commons, so. Actually, maybe the creators are still around?

    Thread Starter alanbaljeu

    (@alanbaljeu)

    I’m going to discuss this among the WP coders forums, sometime in the next day or two.

    I myself look forward to seeing what you come up with

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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