Themes should have to support the new customizer or be able to disable it

[martythornley]

The new customizer tools lok and work great for themes that want to suppor it.

But many themes will have their own options already and may not want to. There are also endless numbers of existing themes that will not support it because they were built before 3.4

While including the "Customize" link and allowing the customizer to open does not break anything, there are a few reasons why themes need to be able to disable it altogether. It can be confusing for users to click a "Customize" link and have a page pop up with no actual customization options.

The options to choose what the front page displays are still there, as are the site title and description. These are settings for the site as a whole and not the theme and could create a few more points of confusion.

While the typical theme is made to be flexible and allow the front page to use the "latest posts" or a "static page" there are also themes, especially on custom sites that do not use that setting.

Many themes will not make use of the site title or description at all and use a logo of some kind. While that option still needs to be there somewhere, it should not be as prominent as it is here (for themes that do not want to support it).

I can think of two solutions, either make themes declare support for the customizer, OR allow a simple "WP_DISALLOW_CUSTOMIZER" constant.

Then we could do something like:

if( current_theme_supports('customizer') )

wp_enqueue_script( 'customize-loader' );

OR

if( ! defined ( 'WP_DISALLOW_CUSTOMIZER' ) )

wp_enqueue_script( 'customize-loader' );

There may be more to it than this but I think theme authors need to be able to either opt-in or opt-out of a feature like this.

[jane]

I disagree. As we move toward putting more in the customizer (menus and widgets eventually) so that all of Appearance is based on Live Preview, there should not be an option to not show it, because it will likely be the main place for all the wp-admin screens in that section eventually. Right now there are things missing from it, even with core themes, but that won't be the case moving forward.

Live Preview is the way of the future. :)

[nacin]

There's also not a requirement that you put every single custom setting into the customizer. For many situations, it might not make sense, certainly not right away.

​This is already unusable, but in the customizer, it'd be even worse.

[martythornley]

Totally get that and in that case agree... But still think forcing the site title and description and front page options does not make sense.

Maybe some way to choose all that would be added there?

Basically more like the admin menu? Let us choose or filter each item as it fits the theme?

[koopersmith]

Replying to martythornley:

Maybe some way to choose all that would be added there?

Basically more like the admin menu? Let us choose or filter each item as it fits the theme?

You can alter pretty much everything inside the customizer using the customize_register hook. I won't recommend removing the standard components, but you certainly can.

[nacin]

Replying to martythornley:

Totally get that and in that case agree... But still think forcing the site title and description and front page options does not make sense.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one — Look at it from the users' perspective. The Live Preview provides them the ability to alter the look and feel of their site as a whole. They don't care if the individual setting falls under Appearance, Settings, or elsewhere.

[jane]

What @nacin said. Once people have seen site title and tagline in previewer they will expect it to always be there. As a core (not theme) feature, there's no reason at all that a theme should be removing it.

[martythornley]

Replying to koopersmith:

Replying to martythornley:

Maybe some way to choose all that would be added there?

Basically more like the admin menu? Let us choose or filter each item as it fits the theme?

You can alter pretty much everything inside the customizer using the customize_register hook. I won't recommend removing the standard components, but you certainly can.

Okay.. That's what I'm looking for... Problem solved!

[martythornley]

Replying to nacin:

Replying to martythornley:

Totally get that and in that case agree... But still think forcing the site title and description and front page options does not make sense.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one — Look at it from the users' perspective. The Live Preview provides them the ability to alter the look and feel of their site as a whole. They don't care if the individual setting falls under Appearance, Settings, or elsewhere.

Definitely hear ya and agree for the typical theme. But when doing a very specific custom site for one client, those settings often don't do much and don't effect the front end of the site at all. Any "extra" setting that does not actually effect the site just confuses things. But since we can use that customize_register hook, it's all good. :)