The Future of the Customizer

Theme Foundry currently using theme options used with back compat. Eventually, they’ll go exclusively customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings..

Changing the look and feel of the customizer.

Implementing controls can be challenging. Clicking through in the preview can be a challenge (which is generally refreshing bugs in custom code, not coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. code).

Customizer as a website creation wizard.

How do you get someone to fire up their website and make just enough changes so that they’re married to it?

Make this website yours.

The customizer as an onboarding tool for core.

  • Can we add the customizer to the install process?
  • Would doing so help user retention?
  • The customizer is about quick wins, and quick wins are especially important for new users.

The customizer interacting with the theme repository.

Let’s make it possible to browse and install themes in the customizer.

What else can we customize?

  • Post previews
  • Widgets
  • Menus

The customizer is more powerful when you control the presentation layer.

  • Post layout
  • In-preview UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.

How far will WordPress core go in terms of adopting the customizer?

Other Ideas

  • User test adding a customize link to the Appearance menu.
  • Provide “starting points” for developers.
  • Offer examples and default templates for customizer controls.
  • Consider potential higher level abstractions for themers.

How can the customizer be used to improve and influence the settings APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.?

Action Items

For core:

Roadmap for allowing the customizer to support multiple instances, which allows it to be used in any use case, instead of just theme switching.

For theme review team:

  • Recommend customizer usage in the theme review guidelines.
  • Work on best practices for theme developers.
  • Documentation and create examples.