Problem: Theme users need as many widget-ready areas as possible. They’re easy to use and they help keep theme template files clean. But! unused, empty, widget-ready areas, areas waiting for you to add a widget of your choice, hang around waiting to spoil your designs by limiting your styling options. Just as bad, empty widget areas can invalidate your markup. But don’t worry, we can do something about it. Only first, we need to take a closer look at the problem.

Here’s how a typical widget-ready sidebar looks. I’ve taken the code from Automattic’s guide to widgetizing WordPress themes.

< ?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
 
< ?php endif; ?>

We’ve got an unordered list and inside of it a statement that looks for the dynamic_sidebar() function. If we’ve registered one, it’ll spit out our awesome stuff: WordPress widgets marked up as list items.

All very good. But what if we start out with no awesome stuff in there? No default widgets? Well, that means our containing ul element will be hanging out there in our site with no li elements in it. A list without list items. Totally invalid and totally unsemantic. Worse yet: what if you were styling that ul with a margin, border, or just positioning it? That styling would stick—even if the widget area was empty. Totally unacceptable.

Thankfully, there’s a fix. Continue reading →

Thematic version 0.6 is an upgrade I didn’t intend on making so quickly and there’s been some changes. Here’s a weird one: when every other WordPress theme author is desperately trying to add more and more settings to their theme options page, I took an option out. Even weirder: it made the theme better. How? I started adding custom hooks and filters to Thematic.

This is something I’ve wanted to get started on for a while so I’m glad it’s finally here.

Custom WordPress Hooks in Thematic 0.6

There are two new custom WordPress hooks in Thematic version 0.6: thematic_belowheader() and thematic_abovefooter(). You can find them in header.php and footer.php, respectively. I’m really excited about this small—but powerful—addition to Thematic. Almost anything you can think of can now be loaded into the theme, just below the header and just above the footer, by taking advantage of your Child Theme functions.php.

Now, I haven’t done anything exciting or creative with this yet—that I can show you—but here’s the outline of some functions that’ll get you started on taking advantage of the new hooks. Remember, these go in the functions.php of your Child Themes.

// Hook into the area below the header
function childtheme_helloworld() { ?>
     <h2>Hello World!</h2>
<?php }
add_action('thematic_belowheader','childtheme_helloworld');

// Hook into the area above the footer
function childtheme_goodbyeworld() { ?>
     <h2>Goodbye Cruel World!</h2>
<?php }
add_action('thematic_abovefooter','childtheme_goodbyeworld');

There you have it. That’s all you need to get started with the Thematic custom WordPress hooks. Fool around with it. Try it out with WordPress conditional tags. See what you can come up with.

Now for the filters. I think you’ll be impressed with the power filters give you over your theme. Continue reading →