Join The Thematic Project

I’m looking for co-maintainers for the Thematic project to help make Thematic one of the best WordPress themes available, free or “premium”. Specifically, I’m looking for motivated people to help with the following:

  • Localization: going through the template files and translation files, making sure everything is up to snuff. The future of any successful WordPress theme hinges on universal adoption and I’d like Thematic to be one of the easiest to localize.
  • Comments: the in-development latest version of Thematic threads comments like PHP-based Singer but I want to make sure it’s doing it the right way. It needs a once over.
  • Bugs: there’s still a few bugs in Thematic—one I found this morning is particularly annoying. I’m just a PHP hack. Thematic needs a committed enthusiast who likes squashing things like this.

Why help?

Good question. Thematic is an open source project. The more people contributing to the project, the better the theme will be (up to a point, of course). I have future plans for Thematic too that co-maintainers should be able to especially enjoy and take part in (I hope—if you’re interested in the project, contact me and I’ll tell you more about it).

Let me know what you think!

35 responses

  1. I’ve just made my first development theme…. then I read about parent/child themes and switched to using thematic.

    I’ve not had it on the site long, enough to like what I see though.

    For my purposes I’d like a few more class declarations to be embedded:

    E.g. I see you have: y2008 m12 d30 h18 in the ‘body’ declaration. I’d like to see a combination of these e.g. y-m-2008-12 and m-d-12-30 (as this would allow styling that only activated on, say, Christmas).

    Bugrep: When I clicked through to the link which gave my implementation of the above:
    http://www.murky.org/blg/wordpress-theme-style-declarations/

    I got the content of this post:
    http://www.murky.org/blg/doctor-who-the-next-doctor/

    This happens whatever article I choose…..

    …. therefore, for now, it’s bye to thematic (was trying 0.8, checked out about 5pm – shame)

    I will be back though!

  2. For reference, I first noted the above behaviour after using the insert widget positions, I switched back to my current theme fairly quickly)

    (Hmm, future thought for WP, this isn’t a theme specific thing … widgets can be a problem when moving between themes, especially for themes with different numbers of widget-places… could widget preferences be tied to a theme in some way? )

  3. I’ve just discovered that you can define css based on two styles:

    http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=MultipleClasses

    e.g.

    .d25.m12 would be christmas (using your class choices)

    Useful to know, though problems are listed – which leads me to think it may be better to provide the single class options of .d25m12 (or similar)

  4. I’m now trying to reproduce that bug for you.

  5. Hmm, very odd. Can’t seem to reproduce.

  6. Gottit!

    Using the ‘recent posts’ widget in the ‘single top’ position gives this effect. The post produced is the third item in ‘recent posts’. The widget seems to reset the loop before the single post item is displayed, and the post displayed corresponds to the last item in recent posts.

  7. Sorry for so many comments – anyhow, hope it’s been useful.

    One other feature I’d like to see, on an index template, an entry should have a class of ‘evenpost’ or ‘oddpost’.

    Here is the code fragment which I’ve used for the evenpost job in the past…
    (note, while not closed, that’s as I’ve just cut this from a working loop).

    Here’s hoping the code isn’t mangled by the commentform!

    $postcounter=0;
    while (have_posts()) : the_post();
    if ( $postcounter % 2 ) { $postalt = “oddpost”; }
    else { $postalt = “evenpost”; }
    if ( is_single() ) { $postalt=”singlepost”; }
    $customclass=”$postalt $othervariables”;
    <div class=””>

  8. Last line wrong, the ending/starting php line was sanitized, the following should give the intent.

    echo “”;

  9. Ah well.

    Was a div with a post_class($customclass);

  10. Hi,

    As I wrote before, I’d like to participate 🙂 Will help with Russian localization.

  11. I have been playing with Thematic for a while, and I am enjoying it. I am not a php guy, so the only way I can help is with moral support – and that you have a lot from me. Keep up the good work.

  12. Hi,

    I’m using themeshaper for my blog and could help you for the german localization.

    Best regards

  13. Hello,

    I am interested in joining the project. I can work on the Portuguese – Brazilian translation.

  14. Hey Ian, ever thought about starting a SourceForge project? Could be a good way to really fine tune Thematic.

    @MURK – Woooh, calm down mate 🙂 I think you’d be better off sending an email.

    1. Well, it is on Google Code.

  15. I know….. I never intended that many comments. You know how it is sometimes, you do one, and then have to correct it – Before you know it….

    1. No worries, Murk. 🙂

  16. Whilst I’m at it – another bugrep. For me, this one is minor, but…

    On a ‘page’ (as opposed to a post), the comment form is not shown (I have checked that comments are enabled on the page.

    Example: My ‘About’ page http://murky.org/blg/about/

    Using Thematic 0.8, WP 2.7

  17. Hi Ian,
    I would like to be part of this project. Could work with @Meister on the German Translation. In addition I could do some more bug hunting than I already did 😉 .. provide some help on support issues .. work on new stuff .. whatever is needed and helpful.

    @Murk .. Add a key + value of “comments” (custom fields) to enable comments on this page .. should solve your issue

    Cheers,

    Chris

  18. @Chris

    I.e Custom field, name – key, value – comments?

    Even if this works (I haven’t tried it yet, as I was unsure as to your meaning), this does seem to be an extra step which shouldn’t have to be taken – on previous themes it did not.

  19. @Murk .. just a short note before I leave for today .. have a look into page.php .. the SVN version

    Cheers,

    Chris

  20. Ah, both name and value must be comments. I see….

    … though the need to do something special to switch on comments for a page does seem to be an undesirable aspect to thematic. I wonder what the reasons behind it are?

  21. […] Ian, the creator of Thematic, is looking for co-maintainers for the Thematic project. [Link] […]

  22. Just a quick notification about murkymatic, my experimental child theme.

    http://code.google.com/p/murkymatic/

    I’ve one problem with it at the moment, not major, just befuddling – details here.
    http://www.murky.org/blg/thematic-functionsphp-problem/

  23. hi Ian,

    although I am still an newbie with just 10 months of WP-experience, I would like to join in because I am seeking ways to craft the themes for my sites myself.

    I could help with the german localisations.

    Greetings – and Happy New Year

    Thomas_U

  24. […] Join The Thematic Project (tags: WordPress theme) Related Posts Share […]

  25. Hi,

    I’d be glad to help providing an Spanish localization if needed, just contact me. 🙂

  26. Hi tehre, I’d like to participate ! I could help with Italian localization. Let me know! 🙂

  27. We’re building our new LUG website using thematic: http://new.softwareliber.ro/
    Any thoughts creating a google project for it?
    I’m open for localizations and support.

    Thanks for great work!

  28. Sorry, I meant Theseus…

  29. The idea is to have a public svn at least. I’m not requesting you to become an active maintainer of the project, but If there will be somebody who extended theseus features you could commit his patch to the repo (theseus still has no gravatar, threaded comments and other sweetness). Also, I did the Romanian translation of theseus, can also mail you the pot file.

    A project on googlecode (for example) explains only that you are open for any contributions, not necessary for real busy maintainence 🙂

    Cheers…

  30. Ian, check out your subscribe-to-comments settings. The manage page template is broken totally…
    😦

  31. Marco Del Tongo Avatar
    Marco Del Tongo

    Hello,

    i’d like to partecipate in bug-fixing, further development and cleaning/maintaning Italian translation.

    Thx for your fantastic work !

  32. Hi Ian,
    I’ve just discovered Thematic — 2 minutes after writing a to do list to create my own framework. That plan is obsolete now and I can start writing child themes right away, so it’s only fair to give back some of the time you save for me. Will say: I’d like to contribute/support Thematic with German localization (if there’s any use for another German). Keep it up!

  33. how about Filipino localization? 😀