Hooks in default themes to encourage standardization

[technosailor]

We're having this discussion over on my site.

​http://technosailor.com/2008/07/16/revolution-vs-thesis-the-premium-theme-cage-match/#comment-226901

It would be very useful to place some guidelines around theme creation. It is entirely possible to control the granular aspects of a theme and its layout if theme developers used common conventions that we layout and use within the default theme.

I don't want to crazy with this idea if it doesn't have merit and if it does, I fully expect to do some patch cleanup and extension. But to provide some context to what I'm talking about, I'm including this patch which integrates a few theme hook conventions that we might use.

Thoughts?

A theme should be entirely (or at least mostly) configurable by plugin, whether homegrown or publicly released. Wanna put an ad under the first, third and fifth post.... Hook on loop_post_count1, loop_postcount3, etc.

Modify a logo without hacking the code to point to a different URL?

hook on the filter theme_logo (which I didn't write because the default theme doesn't have a logo file)

Etc.

You crazy bro.

Why don't more themes include more widget areas instead?

People should include more widget areas instead.