Theme Tip 10 – Theme Frameworks – worth the hassle?

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WordPress Theme Frameworks are everywhere at the moment.  WPCandy produced an exhaustive comparison list of theme frameworks recently and Dan Cole also published a detailed framework comparison some time ago.

I’ll be straight with you. For a long time WordPress theme frameworks and me didn’t get along.

While the concept of child themes made sense, the way one builds them did not seem very intuitive – and in many ways it still isn’t. (Sidenote: For a good read about what theme frameworks and child themes are go here).

Let’s get one thing straight – if you’re just starting with WordPress themes don’t go near child theme development for a while. Hack and build your own themes from scratch first. Get comfortable with that process so you will quickly see the conceptual benefits of child themes later on.

When you first dabble with child theme development it’s going to feel strange. The world of hooks, filters and actions is quite different to plain old normal WordPress theme design.

It’s basically a completely different way of building WordPress themes so you should be prepared to invest quite a bit of time at the beginning if you are to master the process.

So is it worth the effort? I would say a very definite yes if you expect to be building lots of themes going forward. If you’re just building a WordPress theme as a one off I would say no – you won’t see the benefits.

So where do Theme Frameworks come in then?

Theme Frameworks are essentially well developed parent themes (in most cases) that allow you to spin out child themes relatively quickly and easily.

They usually have very well developed and extensible markup and core stylesheets. The more popular theme frameworks do a hell of a lot more than this too. Some frameworks are more suited to hardcore developers while others may be more suited to designers and people with little technical knowledge. Either way frameworks seem to be popping up all over the place.

Of all the frameworks out there, 2 in particular stand out for me:

Genesis

Genesis is pound for pound the best theme framework out the right now. Why?

  • It’s basic features are extremely powerful out of the box
  • It’s SEO features are fantastic
  • Wide selection of child themes
  • Excellent support
  • Continuous and frequent releases
  • Endorsed by WordPress community leaders
  • First rate support

Genesis is not free but is GPL. It’s worth every penny though. All these things together make Genesis the theme framework around.

Thematic

If you’re not willing just yet to splash out on Genesis then Thematic is a fantastic free, GPL alternative from Ian Stewart.

If Genesis didn’t exist, Thematic would be my favourite theme framework and it would seem many other people would agree – it’s currently the 11th most downloaded WordPress theme in the Themes directory . What impresses me most about Thematic is the wealth of documentation and tutorials available via the website. While it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of something like Genesis it does have plenty and will serve as an excellent foundation upon which to learn all about theme frameworks and child themes.


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