New 2010 default theme

Kubrick: klassic, but old and krusty. At eROI we’ve discussed creating our own default/starter themes that contain all the basic essential functions for a blog or a non-blog website. Many theme developers just getting started in WordPress (or even those who’ve been at it a while) take the default theme and tweak it to fit their structure/design.  Oftentimes this leads to having extraneous code that isn’t really needed or even code that has been deprecated. Having new default themes with up-to-date functions, heavily commented HTML and CSS, more basic HTML structures and without functions we don’t use often will help new members of our team learn theme creation faster.

But before we could get out of the gate with our eROI Starter Theme however, I learned that Automattic was already in discussions of creating a new default theme for 2010.  I think it would also be a great idea to have multiple default themes depending on the type of site you are building (blog, basic brochure site, community site, magazine site, etc. etc.), which others have suggested as well. Plus, there is also talk of updating the default theme every year, which is an excellent idea considering how regularly new features are added or changed, or functions deprecated.

For the immediately future though, it looks like we will be getting the new 2010 theme along with WordPress 3.0 in April. Check out the current demo and watch as it evolves!

Canonical plugins

If you’ve ever tried looking for a WordPress plugin you know that sometimes it can be quite a task to find a plugin that:

• Does what you need it to do
• Is compatible with the most recent version of WordPress
• Was written by someone willing to offer support, patches and/or new features
• Doesn’t make your site vulnerable to exploits or slow it down with unoptimized or unnecessary code

Even plugin authors with the best intentions at the beginning can give up on supporting it or updating their plugin, even if the functionality is highly sought after (may have something to do with the fact that compensation for WordPress plugin developers is usually no more than a pat on the back, if that). To help alleviate some plugin frustration, the core dev team has decided to start an initiative originally called “canonical plugins” (though I think they have decided to go with “core plugins” as the official name). These plugins would be developed by teams in conjunction with the development of WordPress itself, and have an official bug tracking system and release schedule.

The first core plugin, Health Check, will be a handy tool that will assist in troubleshooting your WordPress installation should things get a bit wonky. Hopefully that will just be the first of many, many, many official/canonical/core plugins.  With core plugins you know they in theory will have been written and tested properly, will always work with the latest version of WordPress, AND be optimized and secure. Sounds miraculous!

Menu management

This is a new feature in WordPress 3.0 that will fill a HUGE hole in its CMS capabilities. Previously it has been very difficult to create an easily manageable navigation/menu on your WordPress site.  Creating a dynamic list of navigation links on the front-end is doable, but difficult or nearly impossible if you want to have navigation containing mixed content, e.g. pages with different parents, posts, category pages, etc.  For example, if you wanted your sidebar navigation to contain your About page, your introduction blog post, and links to your categories “Design” and “Development”, you’d probably have to code those links into your template.

With a menu manager in the WordPress admin area, you will be able to create one or more menus and add any type of link you wish. The menu management screen looks virtually the same as widget management screen, and appears to work similarly too.  Just call the menu you’ve created in your template, and you will never need to edit that template again to update your navigation links.  So clients can now change their navigation themselves if that’s something the design will allow them to do (horizontal navigation with limited space or with graphic text/buttons might not be good candidates for a dynamic menu).

But wait, there’s more…

If you have any upcoming features that you are looking forward to, or anything else to add, please share!  There are other things happening in the WordPress community that I haven’t mentioned, things like the community code of conduct and making it easier to participate, as well as other features and code changes, but I think this post is long enough as it is, and frankly I just don’t know enough about some of those initiatives. I’m always looking to learn more though so if you have any thoughts/links to share, please do.

I’d like to share a few of things I’m excited about right now in the world of WordPress. Some of these are coming up very soon (WordPress 3.0 is on schedule to be released in April) while some might be rolled out over the course of the year, or maybe even next year. But even the fact that discussions are taking place  is very exciting for a WordPress dork like me.

WPMU merging into WordPress

This is a biggie. For any non-WordPress-nerds, WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) is like a separate branch of WordPress that allows you to have multiple blogs on a single installation. With WPMU you can allow users to create their own blogs on your site (like we did with Online Marketing Connect). Or you can use multiple blogs to better compartmentalize different types of content and information (which we’ve also done before).  The multi-user capabilities have come in quite handy and we use it quite a lot here at eROI. However, the problem with WPMU has been that it was separate from WordPress. Every time WordPress was updated to a new version and given new features, WPMU had to be updated with those same features separately. Releases for MU can come weeks after the equivalent WordPress release.

So now the “thin layer of code” that makes WordPress into WPMU is going to be integrated with WordPress, so they will be one and the same.  This is excellent news, especially for plugin users and plugin authors who always had to make sure plugin code worked in both regular and MU versions of WordPress. The feature set that MU provided will be known as “multi-site” in post-merge WordPress, and can be activated and managed from an admin settings page.  Here is an early-look tutorial for how the multi-site feature will be enabled and configured.  Unfortunately it looks like native multiple domain name support won’t be included in the 3.0 release, but we can cross our fingers for a later release.

Custom post types (or “object types” or “item types”)

When you build a site in WordPress you usually have to work with the two built-in content types, namely Posts and Pages. Because WordPress was created as a blogging platform, these content types make sense – “Posts” are your blog posts or articles, and “Pages” are your static pages like About or Contact.  When you get into using WordPress as a CMS, these content types can be a bit limiting.  It is entirely possible to build a robust data-filled website using WordPress and its default content types, but it can sometimes be confusing to a client (or whoever will be updating the blog) when you explain “Press releases and office locations are under Posts, and your homepage and about page are under Pages.” Unless you spend some time explaining the history of WordPress and WHY it has a “Posts” section even though their site may not have a blog, site management can be unintuitive and abstract.

Enter custom post types.  Instead of using “Posts” for Press Releases, just make a type called “Press Releases,” and add a section in the navigation for Press Releases including Edit and Add New functions. I’ve written before about the plugin More Fields and its custom post type abilities, but have yet to have a completely smooth experience with it (though still love its custom field capabilities).  Fortunately, native support for custom post types was much improved in WordPress 2.9, and in 3.0 it will be even better.  You will still have to register your new content type using a plugin (Discussions on Wordpress Trac indicate a post type manager UI in the admin area won’t happen), but the act of doing so will now automatically add manage & edit screens and custom taxonomy management pages for your custom type.

And that’s not all…

There is too much WP future goodness for just one post. Check back tomorrow for three more totally boffo advancements in WordPress!  Yep, I said BOFFO.