Thanks to the always impressive Chris Gossmann we inch ever closer to Thematic version 1. Put your upgrade hats on and check out Thematic 0.9.6. As always you can download the latest version of Thematic from WordPress.org
Thanks to the always impressive Chris Gossmann we inch ever closer to Thematic version 1. Put your upgrade hats on and check out Thematic 0.9.6.1 As always you can download the latest version of Thematic from WordPress.org.
It’s here! Thematic 0.9.5. A huge refinement of the Thematic Theme Framework—so huge that it’s only caution keeping me from calling it version 1.0. Chris Gossmann and I spent a lot of time on this version chopping down our personal to-do lists. Chris especially, making sure brilliant themes like the Gallery Theme are even easier to make. That’s right, even easier.
Here’s the quick list of what we’ve done to make Thematic easier for you to use.
What it boils down to is this: I want you to be able to quickly develop powerful, rock-solid WordPress Themes with the Thematic Theme Framework. This version of Thematic just makes it even easier.
Of course, there’s more. As always thank you to everyone who’s contributed to the Thematic Theme Framework and this release. I’m getting pretty excited about Thematic and what it’s leading to. I hope you are too.
Download the Thematic Theme Framework and read how to modify WordPress Themes the smart way. It’ll change how you think about WordPress and WordPress Themes.
Built-in drop down menu support is something we’re working on right now for Thematic 0.9 (one of the many changes you’ll likely be hearing about pretty soon). In the meantime, the always resourceful Cozmoslabs has released a nifty little Child Theme for Thematic called PageDrop that adds drop down menus to the current Thematic style. I’m sure this will be very popular. Check it out.
bendler.tv has written an easy to follow tutorial on how to change the Postheader in Thematic. The Postheader is the content, typically including the title and author info, above each post and page. This is can be one of the most powerful tools in your Thematic toolbox and the same technique can be used to modify the Postfooter. It let’s you take extreme control over what appears above and below all of the content on your Thematic site—without touching a single Template file.
If you haven’t started using Thematic yet for your blog it wouldn’t surprise me if you switched just to use the Crystalline theme by Cristi of Cozmoslabs. It’s beautiful. You can demo it and download it at Reflection Media.
Cozmos Labs has a great tutorial showing how to replace the default Thematic menu with a dropdown list of categories. Included with the tutorial is a free Child Theme, CatDrop, perfect for those of you interested in making Thematic more like a magazine-style theme or wanting to see how to make a dropdown menu work.
Cristian Antohe has released his amazing looking Thematic Child Theme, Byty. It’s free, it’s awesome, go download it now and let Cristian know what you think of it!
Thematic 0.7 has been officially released with two major upgrades that’ll help you get what you need done with your WordPress blog or site faster and easier.
I’m doing my best to make Thematic a tool for rapid site development whether you’re digging into it and using it as the basis for a custom site design or using it as a theme framework with a WordPress Child Theme. How? By making the CSS completely modular. Let’s take a look at two of the folders in the library directory of Thematic; layouts and styles.
/layouts 2c-l-fixed.css 3c-r-fixed.css 2c-r-fixed.css 3c-fixed.css /styles 18px.css typography.css 21px.css default.css images.css plugins.css reset.css
Each of these files can be imported into the stylesheet of either your Thematic-based theme or Child Theme with the @import rule—or copy-pasted if you want to make changes without having to override the CSS to make structural changes. Simply put, what that means is that you can bring each of these files into play in your stylesheet and rapidly build a WordPress theme by mixing and matching them. And I mean really rapidly. For example, here’s an example of a fully finished 3 column Thematic Child Theme, with a sidebar on either side of the content, that follows the default Thematic color styles—built by you, out of only a few lines of CSS. Continue reading “What’s new in Thematic 0.7”
Cozmos Labs has published Use WordPress as a CMS with Thematic. Part 1 of a two part series of posts that details how they made the Kraft Auto site.
Dan Philbin of WPCandy gives the lowdown on WordPress Theme Frameworks, Child Themes and custom theme hooks and filters and how they relate to Thematic.
Cozmos Labs has written an extremely flattering tutorial/mini-essay on their experience with Thematic and how easy it was to theme their site. Make sure you read 10 design tips for your custom wordpress theme built with thematic—and don’t forget to share it if you liked it.
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.
<ul id="sidebar"> <!-- likely awesome stuff --> </ul>
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 “Collapsing WordPress Widget-Ready Areas & Sidebars”
