Tag Archives: themes

Introducing Underscores.me

Underscores.me — The Best Way To Get Started With The _s Theme on ThemeShaper. It’s a project Hugo Baeta and I have been working of in the past few days. Make sure you check it out and come back with some feedback. If you’d like your face to appear in the list of contributors, make sure you contribute at least one patch (or pull request) to the underscores project on Github. Have fun!

Twenty Twelve is Back in the Game

Twenty Twelve Demo

Twenty Twelve is back in trunk now and looking pretty amazing, aiming for 3.5. The theme options code is one of my favorite parts, showing off the 3.4 customizer and the Settings API. One thing I absolutely love about default themes in WordPress, is the fact that they show you how to make things right. I think studying a default theme is way more valuable, than reading a whole pile of WordPress books, or attending some kind of WordPress courses.

Default Post Thumbnails in WordPress

Justin Tadlock wrote about the right ways to add default post thumbnails to your WordPress themes. One method is to filter on post_thumbnail_html, and the second method is to simply use else with has_post_thumbnail.

The second method is easier to understand, straightforward and future-proof. The filter in the first method would only work well when we need to change the markup of the thumbnail images output, like print a div with a background-image instead of an img element.

On WordPress Theme Frameworks

I’m in a bad mood today, so I’m gonna do a little whining about WordPress theme frameworks, okay? Don’t be surprised if I delete this post in a day or two ;)

I was reading this post on WPBeginner, where Syed writes that you can edit your theme’s header.php file, and add a stylesheet for a Google Font in your theme. Then he writes about “the right way” to do it in the Genesis theme framework:

add_action( 'genesis_meta', 'wpb_add_google_fonts', 5);
function wpb_add_google_fonts() {
    echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lora|Oswald" media="screen">';
}

Okay, so here’s what I don’t understand. Why on earth should a theme framework way of adding a stylesheet file, differ from the WordPress way to do it?

I spent years and years and years, studying the massive amount of WordPress actions and filters, and by now I’m aware that if I’d like to output something in my theme’s <head> section, I’d simply use a child theme functions.php file, or a plugin file (I wouldn’t edit my header.php), and hook to wp_head to print my link elements, voila!

Now if I choose to use Genesis (or any other theme framework for that matter), it’s supposed to make my life easier, right? Well no! Now I have to spend more and more years to study another billion actions and filters names, so I know that if I’m using Genesis, I have to hook to genesis_meta instead. This is crazy, and the reason why I don’t use any WordPress theme frameworks. Please don’t come and tell me your framework is different and I’m gonna love it, because I’m not.

Oh and in case you were wondering, the right way to include a stylesheet into your WordPress theme would be to use the wp_enqueue_style function.

Phew, I feel much better.