Wordpress Ready

In my previous post I was commenting about how to convert a Wordpress Theme into a Child theme. ‘Child’ sounds like underpowered to me but I think I have to see it more as ‘young’ because a child theme could be extremely powerful, something what I will try to demonstrate over the following posts.

This brand new Child Theme that I called Clone Freemium is based on Thematic and is derived from the Freemium Theme.
It will look exactly as Freemium, but is a Child Theme. The heavy lifting is done by the functions.php file where you can find all the code needed to custom the theme.
You can download this Child for Free at the download page. Drop me a line about your thoughts.

Let’s face it: build a theme from scratch could be hard. Lucky of us, we have Theme Frameworks… and life will be really easy right?. Oh, well…sort of.
I think that build a theme inside a framework, any framework could be a headache. Well, for me it is.
Consider more variables and more options when designing a new theme isn’t help me at all. I have to divide the effort in two different ways, one for designing, one for taking care of the framework.

Also, If there is so many excellent themes and many of them (let’s say a discrete 99% of the total) are  ‘framework-free’, why do you will design a theme with a framework in mind? Chances are that you’ll become crazy dealing with the extra-complexities and you’ll get with a so-so theme with framework functionality. That’s was bugging me for a while when I started using Wordpress frameworks.

So one question arise between my thoughts: How difficult is to ‘port’ a theme to a framework? How difficult could it be to add code and
convert a theme, any theme, even a theme I didn’t build to any framework? The answer is what you’re reading at this moment.

If you ever have designed a theme this post will be easy to follow. But for those who will start your first theme they will gain a lot if you keep reading. A Theme Framework adds flexibility and extend new ‘powers’ to your theme. Talking about benefits I already mentioned that before so please take your time to review it if you like.

The following post (and other to come) explain how to upgrade a regular theme to exploit the power inside a Theme Framework. If you decide to ‘power-up’ a theme or your own design, you should split your winning strategy in the following steps:

Step 1: Choose a theme.
Maybe you already did this, in this case you can skip this step. But if you want to upgrade a theme, you could spend long time choosing it. There are too many possibilities and variations nowadays. And the difficult depend mainly in your personal taste.

In this post I decided to select the Freemium Theme . The selection was based on this few considerations:

• I like the theme , I think is elegant and actually I used to build a variation for this site.
• The theme is XHTML 1.0 Transitional what is telling me a lot about theme’s undercover. It is a minimal guarantee that design is well structured and well formed. This is IMPORTANT. You won’t like to convert a theme to find out that most of the problems are because the theme is bad designed.

So you can see the bar is lower enough to convert any theme that you like.

Step 2: Select a framework
Now again, you maybe did this choice before anything. I know people sticked to different frameworks. I experimented a few Frameworks like Thesis or Hybrid, solid frameworks both of them. The concepts on this guide are flexible enough to apply to any framework.
For this example I  finally choose Thematic because my familiarity and extensive support.

Step 3: Theme Structure Adaptation

My strategy consisted in split the problem in small steps, but you will have to know some understanding of several topics:

•  Get a deep understanding of theme structure , framework structure and Wordpress inner working (this last step is very important). Get familiar with template hierarchy inner working to understand every file in the theme and its mission. This hierarchy rules ALL Wordpress designs no matter if you have a single theme or a framework. Both of them are handled by the same rules.
• Although you can do almost anything with a theme framework, every framework has its limits, and their limits are given by its hardocded structure, is minimal but is there. A framework is simply a theme with steroids, and because it’s a theme it has a base structure. In most cases you can expand and adapt, but you will have an non-replaceable skeleton that you have to respect.
• Given that limitation (a very little indeed) , you first theme adaptation consists in mimic this basic theme structure.

Let’s see a schematic comparison between Thematic structure versus Freemium structure:

There are a few points to note here:
-In Thematic exist two aditional divs: main and container , there are not equivalent on Freemium theme
- the container div is present in both themes but doing different functions.
- The wrapper div in Thematic is identical to container div in Freemium
-Freemium has another additional divs (div menu by example). This can be easily implemented in Thematic so those additonal divs will be
handled programming in functions.php

So, the goal is to adjust Freemium Theme so Thematic and Freemium use the same structure.
Basically:
    1- Renamed the div wrapper to container
    2- Added the missing divs :main and container

This action implied changes to the header.php, footer.php and index.php

Consequences:
-Changing header.php implies changes to footer.php too. Note that main div spans from header.php to footer.php so we have to be careful. This is not a big deal since WP struct will use the same header and footer in all pages, preserving the structure accordingly.
-Changes to index.php are more delicate. If you adjust the loop,  It implies changes on page.php, single.php, search.php and every page using a loop to show posts. Refer to Template Hierarchy to understand its implicancies.

Step 4: Theme Style Adaptation
If you change the basic structure, chances are that you will have to adjust the stylesheet too.
This implies an search&replace inside style.css to make the theme works right. You’re best friend in this situation: Firebug
Not a trivial task but feasible. In the Freemium Theme, a good design clearly made the things easier.

Step 5:Re-Coding
After structure is in position and the style is ok , I started to add the features needed to resemblence the original theme.
This implies to have a good knowledge about the theme and all actions and hooks that framework provides.
Any good framework has the power to add/remove code from virtually any place needed .

The challenge here was to find out what exactly need to deactivate in the framework to things work right. Usually the framework come with a minimal setup that you have to selectively enable/disable to match your needs. In this part is when you will need a good knowledge base for the framework in question or simply to digg into the framework’s code to get an idea how to accomplish every theme’s detail.
In Thematic for example there is a good help about structure in this link .
This is the point where the framework forums are more needed. Every framework has some ‘quirk’ to apply in some particular cases.

Step 6: Test & Re-test
It takes time to check the theme and see if it works in the way expected. I usually use Wordpress y the preview feature to compare head to head the original and the enhanced theme to see if everything works in the way we expected.

Conclusions:
The conversion requires an analysis and very good framework knowledge. This first time conversion took me a regular day of job and fine tuning required a couple of hours more. With a little practice the work can be handled in matter of hours.

So, if you are a designer take my advise: Design the theme outside of the framework, then start thinking how to put it inside. If you convert your
theme to one framework, to convert to another will be far easier.

So now, we have an theme upgraded , what can you do with it? Well, maybe the question is: what can’t you do with it?
The sky is the limit and I will try to show you in future posts.

In the next post I will present the enhanced theme called Clone Freemium

Thanks!

(I can’t believe you could keep watching to here…congratulations!)

You got me. After I did a plugin to solve this problem, Scribefire solve it after all. Eventually it would happen someday.
One good side: Scribefire get better & better, and I learned to make plugins after all.
The King is dead, long live to the King…

Is that possible?

I was testing many twitter plugins for wordpress. Every one has some in common: they didn’t work with weblog clients. There is some kind of technical problem-concept in Wordpress. The only one plugin that I found working is the brilliant Alex King’s Twitter Tools. It will send a twitt when you do a new post, I don’t know if can be tweaked with actions send a Twitter msg when you edit a post.

So what’s the buzz around XMLRPC? What is all about it? If you read in previous post One Ring to Rule Them All – Part I and Part II the idea is to get some tools to help you control your blogs in a remote-fashion. Expand your vision and imagine you have many blogs to control(maybe is already your scenario). What kind of tools will you use in such situation? I’m open to suggestions so let me know what you think.

I have been working around this XMLRPC limitation and I finally I got a simpler (maybe not that simple) workaround. This research lead me to a new plugin that I built: Another Twitter Updater.

Xmlrpc-enabled means that you can work with any weblog client and you won’t have any problems, so that’s is the main reason I’m releasing Another Twitter Updater plugin. Go to the Download page page to test it.

The most annoying thing in Scribefire was its inabiltiy to make custom fields in Wordpress.

To keep things short, that bugged to me sometime until I decided to build a little plugin to workaround this problem.

Actually I’m thinking that I could do the same using shortcodes but for the moment you can test and enjoy the Scribefire Custom Field Plugin. Access to the Download Page and tell me what you think.

A short story.

Mike is beginning with your blog. One site, one browser, one wordpress editor. He is happy with it, but he has so many areas to cover that it decides he want to work with another blog. Two sites,  two editors.

Life is good.
Mike starts blogging both. Their sites are growing and he’s becoming a blog writer. Log in one blog, write, log in another blog, write… is that just easy. He doesn’t even need to remember log details for each site, the browser does it for him. One small problem though: some times it is painfully slow to edit with WP editor. If he works from Iphone it could be worst.  So many ideas to write, so little time… He wants to write post under 5 minutes, like a Twitter-blogger.

Time goes by and one day he begin another blog. He is working for a client. Three sites, three places to login and write.
Three windows, one for every blog. Things are going good, with some complication but he can handle.

Life is good… but it could be better.

Sometimes he is posting in the wrong places, but it’s alright, it is easy to fix and repost in the proper place. Every time he uses another computer he has to setup from scratch.
Sometimes he wishes to optimize its times, and he wanted to know how to do it.
…
(a year passes).
…
Mike is now blogging actively in few sites, for free, for itself and from other customers. It is getting complicated to follow each one. many users, paswords, and it is beggining to be crazy when he has to upload content on every one. Some time ago he decided to use a personal laptop. He refuses to use another computer, the setup is simply time consuming. Life is something between earth and hell.
***************************************************
Ok, let’s multiply this scenario in some degree. What about if you are a professional blog writer maintaining a couple of sites, what about 10 or 20 blogs? Ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit (or isn’t?), we don’t have to go that far to understand what I’m pursuing here, but what if you are posting in many blogs? Is there any tools to aliviate your tasks?

They are indeed. The weblog client are here from sometime. They have some in common:

• Write post withoout having to be online
• Save drafting
• Faster interface
• Better formatting (well, it should be)
• Cross-post multiple blogs
• Local backups

Scribefire has all of this and a few others:

• Lightweight since it is a Firefox plugin
• easily upgradeable
• continous support
• Portable. If you are a traveller and use different computers, chances are that you use Firefox Portable. No many  blogging clients are portable (is there any?). Scribefire will go with you and with every Firefox Portable version you have on your pendrive.

I tested many blogger clients. I think BlogDesk is nice one, it has a minor drawbacks (non portable , some details related about how to handle draft/post items). Maybe one of the annoying problems (to me) is the inability to handle custom fields, something that we can discuss later in other post.(Yes, there is a solution)

To the point: the main factor for a weblog client is its ability to remote-blogging. You don’t have to log in your blog to post. With a proper configuration, it is much faster to blog from a weblog client than from wordpress editor itself.

Tell me what you think. Grab your timer and do the math.

Wordpress has its roots in the blog, but its continued growth has become a system for creating sites extremely versatile. Also, its complexity increases  from version to version (see the graph of ‘hooks’ in The Proliferation of Hooks Over Time).

Hooks complexity over time

At the same time, the design complexity increases as more functionality is available. The use of frameworks for development Theme greatly accelerates the development of a theme.

Why should you use Theme frameworks?

1. It accelerates the development of a theme: The zero point for developing a theme is to create the theme manually. This is always possible, but we have to consider many factors to get a theme working: XHTML support, widget support, design, style management, etc.. The list of things to take into account is large (and it will grow in the future). Starting with a   thematic framework based theme guarantees enough room for expansion.

2. Child themes: This key concept has spread like wildfire across the Internet and has been the key development for themes framework. Child themes let you develop reusing framework functionality coding separation in an elegant fashion inheriting all their functionality. A smart way to develop and maintain our work separately so it will work without changing the framework’s code.

3. XHTML & Optimization SEO support: If you ever did a theme from scratch, you’ll know what I mean. Thematic frameworks provides a safe way to build xhtml valid themes, also SEO enabled and optimized.

4. Configurable Layout: Every framework provides some degree of flexibility to transform into a particular layout, fulfilling the developers needs to create themes with 2, 3 or more columns, a larger header, a footer particular, and so on.

5. Widget support: Another minor detail that a designer starts from scratch has to consider.

6. Extensibility through actions and hooks: Actions and hooks were a feature introduced in the WP core some time ago. This brilliant idea has been one of the factors which led to the growth of WP to the present, a factor used intensively in every thematic framework.

7. Support and expanding user community: all frameworks provide a level of support to settle the issues of extending it. Such as forums, forums and mor forums, the support is critical to effectively use the framework’s powers.

8. Upgradeable without trauma: The thematic frameworks have (or should have ) the ability to upgrade without affecting our custom code. With Our code separated from the framework, it is possible to reuse it even after the framework is updated.

9. Continuous Improvement: thematic frameworks continue to evolve  while Wordpress improves. You won’t have to recode the whole theme because there is a new feature in the neighborhood.
10. It is inexpensive (if not free): The cost of a thematic framework ranging from completely free (Thematic) to a very reasonable price as Hybrid or  Thesis

The thematic frameworks are here to stay.  If you were downloading and and installing Free themes and then tweaking to meet your needs, you will have to reconsider the possibilities offered for a theme framework.

To be honest, Hello World was a difficult phrase. When I decided to give live this site, some new ideas came along and I needed to rethink my perspective. So the time went bye and the months flew with him. Now, almost two months after the original schedule, I decided to begin. I hope you will find interesting.

Welcome to wordpressready, a world around Wordpress!
This site is borning and will be running in full speed in October 1st since January 2010.

Thanks for visiting while it is in construction this site.

You can contact me through admin@wordpressready.com

Thanks!