Thematic Version 0.9—The Best Version Yet

Thematic version 0.9 represents a major change in Thematic. Actually, this release represents everything I’ve learned from the Thematic user community and my continual efforts in studying how most WordPress themes are actually used.

Thematic is all about you: what you want to do with it, how you’re using WordPress, and how you’re going to use it to meet your online goals.

Head to the Thematic download page and get it now or keep reading and find out what the story is with the best version yet of your favorite WordPress Theme Framework.

The New Default Thematic Style

As you can see, there have been some changes. Thankfully, they’ve all been for the better.

First of all, I’ve done away with building to a consistent baseline. That is, having everything line up to the same baseline across content and sidebar. In theory, or on a static site, that’s a great idea. In practice, I’ve found that it ends up being a detriment when you’re customizing using the default style as a guideline or starting point. Basically, things stop lining up and it makes me koo-koo bananas when I go to visit your blog.

What I’ve replaced it with is a complete rethink of the Thematic typographic scale that adds up to a more harmonious overall appearance. Something beautiful on it’s own but easy to fit into almost any design. You can think of it as a damn elegant theme that’s ready for you to build a successful website with. Beautiful, pleasant, damn elegant typography, and simple design, are a must for engaging your website visitors and keeping them coming back. Now Thematic takes care of all that for you.

And the default Thematic style is easier to customize. No more multiple shades of blue (but keep reading to find out how Thematic Classic can bring it all back) that look kinda weird with your custom image header. In it’s stead, a simple and consistent scale of gray ready for you to take advantage of and color up yourself. (And super easy to edit with a find and replace in your favorite text editor!)

The real icing on the cake for people ready to take their Thematic theme to the next level, Hooks and Filters, are now everywhere in Thematic. Making your Child Theme a potential super-plugin for WordPress. You can see the complete list on the new (in development) Guide To Customizing The Thematic Theme Framework along with code snippets that you can just cut and paste into your Thematic Child Theme.

Drop-Down Menus Built Into Thematic

Thematic now has jQuery-powered drop-down menus built in to the core. This is one of the most common feature requests I’ve received—but I resisted doing this for a long while. Finally, I came to the conclusion that Thematic’s refusal to gracefully handle sub pages was a deficiency. Especially since it’s so easy to modify the code that’s creating the drop down menus with your Child Theme.

First of all, if you don’t like drop-down menus, outright killing the drop downs in your Child Theme is actually pretty easy.

// Filter away the default scripts loaded with Thematic
function childtheme_head_scripts() {
    // Abscence makes the heart grow fonder
}
add_filter('thematic_head_scripts','childtheme_head_scripts');

Overriding and adding to the default options with your Child Theme is pretty easy too—once you know how to do it.

// Filter the default drop-down options
function childtheme_dropdown_options($dropdown_options) {
    return <<<EOD
    <script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery.noConflict();
    jQuery(document).ready(function(){ 
        jQuery("ul.sf-menu").supersubs({ 
            minWidth:    12,                                // minimum width of sub-menus in em units 
            maxWidth:    27,                                // maximum width of sub-menus in em units 
            extraWidth:  1                                  // extra width can ensure lines don't sometimes turn over 
                                                            // due to slight rounding differences and font-family 
        }).superfish({ 
            delay:       800,                               // delay on mouseout 
            animation:   {opacity:'show',height:'show'},    // fade-in and slide-down animation 
        }); 
    });
    </script>
    
EOD;
}
add_filter('thematic_dropdown_options','childtheme_dropdown_options');

Simpler footer text options with shortcodes

Thematic has always stood out amongst premium and free themes by letting you edit the text that appears in the footer of your blog. Even going so far as letting you remove the link back to the Thematic Theme release page without having to edit the actual theme files or purchasing special “unlock” codes.

And now, we’ve made it even easier to edit your footer text by using shortcodes for some common footer items.

This Is Great News for Theme Developers

If you’re a theme developer looking to publicly release your Thematic Child Theme you can add a link to your Child Theme release page in the [theme-link] shortcode. Here’s the code snippet you’ll need in your Child Theme functions.php:

// Add a link back to your Child Theme release page in the [theme-link] shortcode
function childtheme_theme_link($themelink) {
    return $themelink . ' &amp;amp; <a class="child-theme-link" href="http://example.com/" title="Awesome Theme" rel="designer">Awesome Theme</a>';
}
add_filter('thematic_theme_link', 'childtheme_theme_link');

That example will return both the Thematic link and your link. Of course, you can always just return a link to your Child Theme release page alone:

// Add a link back to your Child Theme release page in the [theme-link] shortcode
function childtheme_theme_link($themelink) {
    return '<a class="child-theme-link" href="http://example.com/" title="Awesome Theme" rel="designer">Awesome Theme</a>';
}
add_filter('thematic_theme_link', 'childtheme_theme_link');

Thematic Gives You a Head Start on Custom Theme Development

You probably already know that Thematic let’s you easily, and rapidly, build bullet-proof websites with it’s modular CSS. You can use @import to load up a CSS reset, basic typography, 2 or 3 column grids, basic styles, and more. Now Thematic gives you a head start on Child Theme development. This is the real secret to taking advantage of everything Thematic has to offer.

As of now, there are 2 basic Child Themes officially part of the Thematic project, Thematic Classic and A Sample Thematic Theme.

A Sample Thematic Theme resides in the main thematic directory. Simply move a copy into your wp-content/themes directory, rename it and activate it and you’re on your way to customizing your theme the smart way—without touching the original theme files.

Want to add a search form to the header, remove the menu, add more options to the menu, register new sidebars, or custom widgets? You can do all that and more from within your Child Theme functions using the hooks and filters built into Thematic.

The Thematic Classic Child Theme (download it here) approximates the look of the original Thematic, pre version 0.9. It’s also a good example of how to make a custom Child Theme by mixing and matching the modular CSS files. Perfect for those of you who have been reluctant to customize your theme using a Child Theme.

Thank You—To Everyone

Thematic has a ton of contributors and hawk-eyed supporters on a hunt to make it better but I’d like to give a special thank you and shout out to Chris Gossmann who helped make this release a killer one. Chris, you’re awesome. Thank you.

And an extra big thank you goes out to all the people working on translations that have helped make Thematic a truly international project. _e(‘Thank you’, ‘thematic’).

And to everyone using Thematic, talking about it, and promoting it, thank you. Thematic could have been just a fun project for me but it’s all of you, spurring me on to make it better, that’s making it a great one.

Download Thematic and build your blog the smart way.