WordPress Post Formats. Image courtesy of Greg Rickaby/GregRickaby.com.

Check out this impressive array: WordPress Post Format Eye-Candy: Tumblr Style Theme Inspiration Showcase by Kym Huynh at WordCast. The problem those site designs solve is inherent in WordPress, which will permit the posting of many types of information. Just text alone – WP is ready to accept haiku-or-shorter-length compositions, documents long enough to require pagination, lists, lots of white space, no white space – lots.

This is a problem when – for instance – the post title is very large – and the post body itself is very short. It’s  not pleasing to the eye  – and not an efficient use of screen space. Such as

An h2 post title which sits atop a very short post

A very  short post.

There is a feature now available for theme authors called “post formats.”  Here’s the WP Codex entry on “Post Formats.” And here are some other excellent resources.  At present – if I understand things correctly – only  the Genesis theme framework from StudioPress uses this feature, and so far not in every theme. (One nice theme that uses most or all of the formats is Tapestry).

From Greg Rickaby, a designer who works mostly with the Thesis Theme and with the aforementioned Genesis, these posts:

• How To: Post Formats for Genesis Child Themes (this post predates the adoption of page formats by the folks at Studio Press, but if you’re comfortable altering your functions.php file, it’s my impression that this post will help you introduce page formats into an existing theme);
  
• While you’re there, checkout Mr. Rickaby’s Fringe child theme forGenesis
• How To: Enable Post Formats in WordPress (If my post is confusing, start with this post from GregRickaby)

From Andrew Nacin, a WP Core Developer, and excellent elucidator of WordPress and other issues),   On standardized post formats gives some insight on how this evolved, and reminded me not to take for granted the people who labor over open-source apps and who generally are not rewarded in a way remotely proportional to their efforts. Mr. Nacin points out that this is still a work in progress, and

Are there flaws? Yes. There are a few confusing factors here. One, as Mark [Mark Jaquith - see MarJaquith.com, and/or this post] suggests, a ‘custom post type’ is a horrible name for what it really is. Ironically, the best name for ‘post formats’ (trust me, we pulled out our thesauruses for this one) would have been ‘post types.’ Then there’s the confusion where some have used the term ‘custom post formats’ even though they’re not talking about custom ones at all — probably because of confusion around the similar-sounding ‘custom post types’ term.

To point out another example – an “aside” for these purposes, appears to be defined as a post without any title ir caption, and below a certain length. In one theme I tested, it was clear that, less than one complete line of text, and the post stayed as an “aside.” But when I added five lines additional copy, WP – or the theme – in any case, automatically – switched the radio button from “aside”to “standard.” One assumes that eventually themes will come with  some documentation about the limits of formats – perhaps some control over them. But – even as is, this feature is an enormous step forward in WordPress’s trajectory towards being even more flexible without the average user touching code. My point  is that while this feature is likely to get rapidly better, even as is it’s  an outstanding improvement.  How hard it is to incorporate into an existing theme I couldn’t  say.

Last,post types and formats and taxonomies, oh my! from Otto on WordPress.

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Check out CMS Critic – their range is not limited to WordPress, and is, in my opinion, an invaluable resource when trying to match CMS application to client and project.

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Theme-Junkie, which I learned about today, has 12 WordPress themes on offer, which I have not yet experimented with, and given my current theory that even with the most customizable theme, if it looks like what you want by default, it might just be the right theme for you. Put another way – it’s good to have lots of customization choices, but even better have to use as few as possible. (In my case, since I’m prone to making seriously stupid mistakes – often in rapid succession, I’m usually looking for more choices than is good for me. Which, I suppose, makes me  sort of a WP theme “junkie.” )

One theme that caught my eye was CubeLight, ($29.95, no limit on domain usage), which includes some small touches that I like.

The cube is tripled in this image, used in the theme to break up text, a clever play on the mathematical meaning of “cube” (to triple a given sum):

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On Tuesday, I did, for a presentation about customization without code.  The first portion was about the Atahualpa theme from BytesForAll, and the second about the Genesis Framework used in conjunction with its Prose child theme from StudioPress.com

Atahualpa is free, and my impression is that it’s quite customizable without resort to any code. (BytesForAll is in the process of developing its own paid framework, ThemeFrame, now available in late-beta form for $80 with upgrade rights. The developers may be – temporarily – in the awkward position of competing with their relatively undeveloped paid framework against their own highly functional free theme.  Another reminder that we’re in rapidly changing times, and tomorrow’s business model may not be foreseeable today).

With respect to the Genesis Framework, I’ve heard nothing but good things  – initially from Chris Brogan. And StudioPress includes Brian Gardner, whose work is always first-rate, and Mark Jaquith (his personal blog is incisive, funny, and he takes and posts wonderful photographs).

I’d like to be able to make  authoritative and comprehensive comparisons between theme frameworks. But I can’t.  I own licenses for several theme systems for two reasons:  first, given my other commitments, I’ve decided that I’m not going to teach myself CSS, except what I pick up along the way; I’m committed to trying to other educational goals (EMT certification, a ham radio license, and training and occasionally teaching karate; second, while I’m a big believer in free and open source software – I believe, to quote President Lincoln, that we’re entitled to “the fruits of our labors.” Third, I’m convinced that the right theme framework(s) will let me do what I need to do on the net.

I own licenses to several theme  frameworks/systems – and they’re all different, and all have virtues. Eric Hamm’s Frugal Theme, has, I think, the highest percentage of screen space in a theme usable by widgets. Most of what I’ve tried to do with  Frugal has come out perfectly. When it didn’t, it was generally a result of my limitations or a failure to “RTFM.”¹  Chris Pearson’s Thesis Theme has enabled me, using easily accessible settings and no code at all, to produce a website as a memorial for a close friend’s late relative – in under three hours. The late relative had been a performer of some celebrity – and had friends all over the world – so a commentable blog was ideal for coordinating memorial services. Similarly, in less than one hour, I was able to use Thesis when a neighbor’s dog had gotten lost. (Now, I would use an existing site which has many local subscribers – but as it turned out the site was instrumental in the dog’s eventual return). However, I’m not always able to make Thesis do what I can imagine – and while there are a growing number of skins available, they’ve got to be loaded via FTP in a less-than-simple-enough manner. I blew it in three out of five sandbox attempts.

I’ve made a point here of not including my affiliate codes in any of the links in this post. I’m a fan of both Eric’s and Chris’s work, and hope this post doesn’t cost me any friends. These theme frameworks are all amazing pieces of work – they stand in relation to blog/site design as a word processor and laser printer stand in relation to a typewriter and a mimeograph machine.

If you’re reading this post wondering “which theme is this fool recommending, anyway?” I’m saying that this is not a zero-sum game – WordPress theme frameworks aren’t merely tools, they’re design guides of a sort. And if they weren’t, perhaps the non-coder (including me) would be entirely overwhelmed.

And – to round this out – which is to say that now I’ll either be perceived as fair (my aspiration), or alienate everyone I know who has anything to do with WordPress – there are three other systems that provide a lot of “customization without coding”:

Ian Stewart’s Thematic System, with its many progeny;

Headway Themes, with a number of add-on features not seen elsewhere;

Last but not least:  ProThemeDesign offers two systems – and because each has, if I understand correctly, child themes which won’t run on the other, in fairness they should be considered separately. First, the Elemental theme Framework by both Darren Hoyt and  Ben Gillibanks. Gillibanks was first well-known, I think, for the Regulus Theme;  also on offer at  ProThemeDesign is Darren Hoyt’s Mimbo Pro, which counts as a “system,” by my lights, because “skins” are available for it, in addition to the options inherent in the theme itself.

For present purposes we won’t elaborate on the difference between “skins” (e.g. Thesis and Mimbo Pro)  and “child themes” (most, if not all, of other theme systems/frameworks discussed in this post) – both are ways of increasing the choices available to the theme user, those choices including visual choices (color, layout, fonts)

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1. “RTFM” is an abbreviated idiom, and stands for the expression “Read The F—ing Manual.”

Its sister site, SmashingUpdates carries paid themes, free themes, and user-submitted themes, but I think  that’s worth a separate post. Even so, here’s a screenshot of one of their recent free themes, Smash

Smash Theme from Thumbpress.com and Top 25 Best WordPress Statistics Plugins and Tools List from WPSkinner.com.

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Download available here. The ZadaNews theme can be seen in operation at ZadaNews.com.

I installed it in a sandbox (quick: can we use “sandbox” as a verb, as in “we sandboxed it within an inch of its life”?) and found looked impressive immediately, and the backend²  (i.e. the admin panels and controls made sense). made sense and worked worked fine.

Download available here. The author(s) of the theme, and the proprietors of the ZadaNews site, don’t say much about themselves.

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1. The General
   Public License, is, according to Wikipedia, “an example of a powerful copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft. Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples.” The GPL is the creation of the Free Software Foundation
2. If I’d had either enough coffee or enough sleep I’d have writen better, more precise. In point of fact the WP “backend” is probably better used to describe  the SQL tables and other software upon which WordPress depends.

Frugal Theme – moral judgments up to you.

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