New theme for 3.0 -- Twenty Ten

[dd32]

Spurred on by the discussion of Sandbox coming up again on wp-hackers, Its lead me to think about the themes issue.

Currently, The bundled themes are not exactly the simplest to modify, Well, They are, But they either end up with dodgy results, Similar looking, Or just plain ugly.. This leads many users to attempt to find another theme to use, and customize, This is all good, But there are a few problems with the majority of themes:

• Complex HTML Structure
• Complex CSS Hacks
• Backwards compatible
• Use code from older WordPress versions (ie. I picked up a theme a few days ago, Which used things deprecated in 2.2, yet required 2.7 functionality)
• Just plain ugly code

So, What i'm proposing, Is that instead of including a current generation base them such as Sandbox (Or the many others that escape my mind right now)
Is that the WordPress Project aims to create a new theme, Which is Simple, Stylish, Clean code, Uses the latest features, And most importantly, Is easy for new developers to customise to their own requirements. At first, This probably sounds like yet another sandbox, But the idea behind it, Is to provide a platform which people can base their work from, Full well knowing that it uses the latest practices, Explains what its doing, and how its doing it, A Community effort, Not a single person (Or a small group of people)'s opinions on how to do it.

Kubrick isn't bad, It does look OK, and it IS a good theme, But its not the best for people to be basing their new themes off.

New theme developers (And current developers even), Need something which they can rely upon.

So a theme which:

• Uses clean markup
• Has a basic style included, Which is designed to be replaced.
  • The default style should be able to be used by itself, But it should be in such a way that its simple to be customised
• Doesn't rely upon fixed width styling, or fixed background images
• Uses limited JavaScript
• Uses the Theme api correctly
  • comments_option() instead of 'open' == $post->comment_status
  • post_class(), etc.
• Look good even when the user modifies the theme slightly (ie. changes widths or floats an item)
  • I realise it's impossible if they're changing it, But a simple small change should not break everything, It should be designed with the purpose of looking good whilst having its layout moved around
• includes custom Widget examples, SIMPLE widget examples
  • Ie. Something with no control, Just a simple "This little widget Adds this theme-specific functionality, It requires no modification, just does this when inserted"
• Uses ALL the current functionality WordPress offers

Kubrick has been around for awhile, Something new and fresh is needed now, The 2.5 and 2.7 redesigns have been great, And the code changes under the hood are rather clean, Just need to help theme developers create themes to be as great as the WordPress codebase is (Not to say that professional theme developers do not develop good themes, Professional theme creators are a minority in those who customize themes)

(I apologise if any of this has been repeated numerous times, If i'm unclear, Or contradict myself.)

Not sure I have time to write something myself, but this would definitely be a worthwhile addition.

I don't want to blow my own trumpet unduly, but Tarski offers at least half of what you're suggesting. There are ideas in there I think are worth rolling into any theme framework to be included in WordPress, including API extensions, the ability to change the layout without changing code (this is great for non-technical people) etc. It's also up to date with regards to WP functionality; I track trunk and synchronise releases with WP core. I'm not suggesting it should be imported wholesale into WP, but that there's a lot of pretty decent code which could be appropriated by anyone wanting to take this on.

 http://github.com/ionfish/tarski/

The problem i have with Tarski, is that its not easy for people to tinker with its code, Its got a tonne of PHP in there which many would be confused about.. I'm wanting a theme with very limited extra PHP, focusing on the Core WordPress and what it can offer, Not what a smart theme designer has thought up and decided to include.. Thats what more advanced users can do, Not the majority of people who this'd benefit

My thought of customizable is NOT user-based clicking here, clicking there, but rather at modifying the HTML/CSS/PHP, Such a theme that was point and click, would be very useless for others to extend off, simply because it'd be rather complicated already.

Simplistic all the way through is what i'm thinking of.. There exist enough themes which do lots of things out of the box, Not enough which can be used to showcase and base stuff off..

As I mentioned to DD32 on IRC, I am strongly in favor of this. I have no problems with Kubrick and infact I like it a lot, but for a user looking to create their own theme, Kubrick isn't a great base for a variety of reasons. Tons of people use it as a base anyway though for their unique looking themes and we should help them avoid doing that.

Bundling a "want to make your own theme? then check this one out" theme with WordPress would greatly assist users new to WordPress in both how it should be done and so forth.

I have been looking for WordPress tickets to take on lately and while I have absolutely no eye for design, I do have a ton of experience when it comes to the coding of themes. So sign me up for this if it gets the go ahead and if any designers (Matt Thomas perhaps?) want to knock out the HTML/CSS. I'd be happy to do the rest.

DD32: those are definitely valid points. I suppose I was also thinking about things like CSRF-protected login/out links, SSL-admin compatible links, which many themes don't include, but Tarski does. I certainly wasn't advocating rolling something as complex as Tarski into WP wholesale (it's over 6000 LOC, which is not exactly lightweight).

This would also be a good venue to think about new API hooks which could help theme authors provide a common framework that plugins, child themes etc. could use to extend themes without needing to chop up the theme code. I did this while ago and it's great to be able to tell people not to hack the core code but to write a small plugin instead.

Just wanted to chime in that I think this is a good idea and support the general principle. There are a few specific customization techniques that I'd like to see when things start for firm up.

I'll talk to a few designers about something within this framework - thinking something relatively minimalist, impeccable typography, and clean colors that fits within the WordPress aesthetic.

I`d like to throw in my two cents in this discussion:

WordPress should come with a very well documented theme framework with child themes for several audiences. A blog theme, a "cms" page-centric theme, a news style theme and a photoblog child theme.

There are many great theme frameworks out there, but the default that shipes with WordPress should set a new standard in theme framework documentation, for both "experts" and novices. Better documentation than its possible for a single or three theme developers to make for free on spare time, with documentation in the codex, in wordpress.tv and maybe in a new opensource e-book as planned with WordPress.

Matt: I believe you came with some photoblog promises in your new year post...

There are so many dull, boring Kubrick blogs out there, with little or bad content making the impression that WordPress is also dull....

John Myrstad

Replying to matt:

thinking something relatively minimalist, impeccable typography, and clean colors that fits within the WordPress aesthetic.

Exactly, Minimal, Clean, Yet still covers all the bases, and to use the Poetry line, People can understand straight away and get straight to changing it how they want

WordPress should come with a very well documented theme framework with child themes for several audiences. A blog theme, a "cms" page-centric theme, a news style theme and a photoblog child theme.

That sounds great too, Bland base theme, Child themes which only modify a small ammount, but give the bland theme a huge facelift for a specific purpose. There are a number of specific themes around for photoblogging, or magazine, but most are rather complicated.

@Matt: Any developments?

Any more feedback from anyone?

Replying to JohnMyr:

WordPress should come with a very well documented theme framework with child themes for several audiences. A blog theme, a "cms" page-centric theme, a news style theme and a photoblog child theme.

I agree. One challenge I face is the stereotype of wordpress being "just a blogging platform." I think a suite of themes is a good idea.

What is the status on this project?

What is the status on this project?

I'm thinking of creating a public SVN somewhere and starting to write something at this rate, Might get some more people interested/giving feedback

There are all kinds of theme frameworks around. Thematic, sandbox, Carrington. Pick one and find someone to do a decent default design.

Replying to ryan:

There are all kinds of theme frameworks around. Thematic, sandbox, Carrington. Pick one and find someone to do a decent default design.

If we do bundle, we should fork so we have control over it. Sandbox for example hasn't been updated in quite a while and lacks all of the 2.7 stuff (comment classes, threaded comments, etc.). Not sure about the others though.

My point is using an existing framework may be a better solution than starting from scratch (I dunno), but if we do go with an existing framework we should give it a through tire kicking and tune-up.

Lloyd Budd sent me a link to this post yesterday... I wish I had seen this before and would have offered my help. I just launched a series of templates yesterday that address this needs. I haven't even announced it yet, but was asking Lloyd what he thought. The site is  http://www.framework-templates.com.

The reason I put these together is because I'm teaching this summer to a group of Web developers who have so far learned Dreamweaver, CSS and HTML. The next part of the course was to focus on a CMS and WordPress was suggested. In order to get ready for them, I thought I would clean up the templates that I use. I too felt very frustrated with Kubric when I started and felt like minimalist templates where one can just add their design would be good to have.

I don't think that these templates are compete by any means. For example, I don't think that they support threaded comments, but maybe they would be a good starting ground? I would be happy to contribute to this if needed.

This seems to be blessed for 2.9...

 http://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/2010-a-theme-odyssey/

Sorry, I obviously meant 3.0, not 2.9....

Just to throw in

• CSS reset
• Clean Markup in accordance to what API functions return (those can be aligned while the theme is developed)
• Propper UTF-8 support
• Propper RTL / LTR support
• Child theme demo for beginners
• CSS classes, IDs only where appropriate
• Widget support out of the box / default sidebar config on setup
• Nested / Unnested Comments support
• Theme should work with stylesheets switched off / Browser default stylesheets
• HTML should validate; CSS should validate
• Keep it simple, not stupid. That will help others to evolve based on this.
• CSS Documented with  CSSDOC.
• Unobtrusive - should properly work w/o javascript and plugins enabled.
• A nicer header image/color support than the current default theme. But please keep something similar in, many new users love that AFAIK.

Related: #11609

Related: #10643

[13012]

(In [13018]) Make twentyten the fallback theme. see #9015

(In [13019]) Switch to a constant for the fallback theme. See #9015.

[13019] hilights the fact that we need a comments-popup.php in the new theme.

Small note: per-post/page header images (sourced from a post thumbnail) are currently broken due to #12146

You can work around this by not using a named size when calling get_the_post_thumbnail() (and passing a size array instead), but that's improper.

(In [13027]) Use post_password_required(). see #9015

Some gettext added for #12170. Also switched some places in the comments form to use site_url() and admin_url().

Beau is looking at adding comment_form() and login_form() support.

(In [13029]) Escape some attributes. Fix search form action. see #9015

Use comment_form()

(In [13031]) Use comment_form(). Props beaulebens. see #9015