Core Team Meetup Recap: Default Theme “Twenty Twelve”
One of the topics discussed at the core team meetup was next year’s default theme. It was determined that the default theme will be Matt’s project for 3.4. Matt will be overseeing a theme designer (via Lance) to ensure a theme that is “kind of different from before, generally palatable, and that Matt likes.” Once Matt chooses a design, a directory will be started and the core team will supervise the code from the start, hopefully with review cycles involving the theme review team.
Some notes about what we want in a new default theme:
- single post/permalink view with post formats is needed
- variable height header image
- mobile version
- default to static front page (will need a function in core to auto-choose)
- editor styles the same as front end.
- avoid clever things that aren’t super-useful (like ephemera widget)
- start with 2011 as base for code (or 2010, which has gotten more updates and had more eyes on it)
- no featured image in header
- by default – no header image
To-do: Reverse engineer from 3.4 timeline to create a schedule of deadlines for theme design and development.
Jorge, 
Evan Jacobs 3:30 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
I would like to suggest incorporating an adaptive framework (like Skeleton) into the next default theme, such that a mobile site doesn’t have to be designed separately.
Jane Wells 3:45 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
It would have been more accurate for that line item to say “looks good on mobile” rather than “mobile version,” much as Twenty Eleven does.
Emil 4:01 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
@Evan Twenty Eleven does have Responsive Design since I believe day one, so no it doesn’t need to be designed separately because it works and looks the same on all* devices!
@Jane is this something beyond Responsive Design?
Thanks,
Emil
Jane Wells 4:12 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Responsive design does not mean looking the same on all devices, it means dynamically rearranging and/or resizing things so they will look good and make sense regardless of size.
Emil 8:36 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Yes I know and you’re right, for some reason I was under the impression that “elements” do resize in Twenty Eleven. What does not is video embeds a/ka/a (Post Format Test: Video) but that can be changed with i.e. object, embed, video, { max-width:100%;}.
Thanks for an additional input,
Emil
Rafael 3:41 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
or using FitVid.js
Emil 5:59 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
I tried, FitVid.js works like charm
Banago 9:59 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
I’d like to contribute to Twenty Twelve theme. Let’s hope so.
Sara Rosso 11:12 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Exciting! Would love it if the sidebar is an option to turn on or off on a permalink / single post page (instead of automatically off as in Twenty Eleven)
Jane Wells 1:35 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
I believe it already is in Twenty Eleven. It just depends on what you choose as default layout on Theme Options, doesn’t it?
Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 2:37 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
No, on TwentyEleven there’s no option to turn the sidebar ON for posts/pages. You can turn it on or off for the front page/archives, but not the posts. IIRC that was to showcase the content of the post, and not detract with ‘happy sidebar fluff!’
Jane Wells 3:37 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
@Mika: I must have blocked that out. There were a number of things I didn’t like about Twenty Eleven.
Jeff Farthing 1:56 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Let’s please make sure that this time, the default theme properly calls The Loop, on all templates! It’s not very cool when the default theme doesn’t even follow the WP standard (as the case with Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven).
Jorge 2:52 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
the new theme could have 4 layout options. “content”, “sidebar-content”, “content-sidebar”, “sidebar-content-sidebar”. It would be wonderful.
Rami 10:21 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink
+1 !!!
3 column theme would be great!
BGR 6:27 pm on February 21, 2012 Permalink
two side bars with flexibility on placement is ideal.
Jorge 5:10 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
Great! your comment makes three of us. It would be excellent that more and more people joined this petition and the development team listen us.
Ian Stewart 3:24 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Hot-diggity-dog, yes.
Chip Bennett 9:33 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
This one had me head-scratching a little bit, so I’m curious to see how it gets implemented.
Andrew Nacin 1:42 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19627
Eric Mann 3:37 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
If we wanted to set the standard for how social sharing icons are added to individual posts/pages, this would be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate and establish a best practice. Maybe with a theme-specific hook. Maybe with `get_template_part( ‘post_footer’ )`. In any case, setting the standard with the release of Twenty Twelve and 3.4 would convince a lot of developers to follow suit.
Jane Wells 3:43 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
There’s a ticket for something like that on trac, from when I offered to make cookies for whoever solved it first.
Eric Mann 4:38 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Bingo (https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/18561). It’s just that a few people seemed persuaded that this should be theme-specific and not in core. So if it’s not going to be in core, I think Twenty Twelve would be a great way to demonstrate how it should be done in themes. Either way, I figured *now* would be the best time to start a discussion as it pertains to 3.4/Twenty Twelve …
Helen Hou-Sandi 4:15 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
+1
Post extras!
It was #18561.
Rev. Voodoo 5:59 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
Ha! I was just working on a theme for my personal blog, and adding in some hooks…. Logged on here to suggest the very same thing!
Cais 4:29 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
We would be greatly interested in being involved with this … I’m sure it will be easily arranged.
bobbi 5:39 pm on December 20, 2011 Permalink
I hope you start with 2010 as the building block, personally I have never used 2011 as there was nothing about it i liked. Way more users are using 2010 and way more children of 2010 have been developed.
billbennettnz 1:25 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
Can we have a 2012 theme where there’s only one H1 on each page? I’m told by my expert friends having more than one – like 2011 – is hurting my site with Google search.
Evan Jacobs 2:12 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
Multiple H1s are actually semantically OK in HTML5.
billbennettnz 2:32 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
Thanks Evan, that’s helpful to know. And ammunition to keep the nay-sayers quiet.
Emil 8:57 am on December 21, 2011 Permalink
Yes and no See: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201106/on_using_h1_for_all_heading_levels_in_html5/
Lance Willett 4:24 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink
For some fun reading related to this topic, see #17611.
Emil 11:55 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink
Good one Lance! I failed not to mention that ticket here
That was fun indeed!
Tim 3:59 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink
An optional sidebar on single post pages would be amazing!!!
Worli 12:24 am on December 23, 2011 Permalink
Mobile version would be a great feature. Hope it has a option to set left or right side bar, since many users still prefer left side bar.
Gaurav Tiwari 1:14 pm on December 24, 2011 Permalink
Make it as good as Twenty Ten is in Print, Please.
Jhay 5:45 am on December 25, 2011 Permalink
A default WorPress theme with no default header image? That’s something to look forward to.