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  • Lance Willett 11:48 pm on February 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , twentythirteen   

    Twenty Thirteen Draft Now in Core 

    Hi theme reviewers,

    Twenty Thirteen is ready for feedback and testing in core: http://make.wordpress.org/core/2013/02/18/introducing-twenty-thirteen/

    Our goal is to have it ready along with the rest of 3.6 for an April launch. Would love your eyes on it for testing, performance, tying in with core features, all that good stuff.

    Also noting several theme-related core tickets, if anyone wants to jump in with comments, patches, and testing:

    We’ll have open office hours Tue/Thu throughout the cycle (see http://make.wordpress.org/core/ sidebar for times), so hope to talk with you soon.

     

    • Emil Uzelac 11:50 pm on February 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Will do for sure and Twenty Thirteen looks mighty fine :)

      Emil

    • @mercime 1:06 am on February 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Congratulations @matt @lancewillett @obenland @joen and team.

    • Daniel 6:53 am on February 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Can we please add the ticket about styling the post comment button?

    • Sallie Goetsch 11:55 pm on February 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I like the typography (except the menu font, which is microscopic–PLEASE bear in mind that not everyone using WP is under 25) and the color. It’s pretty and fun. Can’t imagine using the theme in a million years, though, because the sites I build aren’t blogs and do need to be customized to the user. Where does the theme customizer fit in with something that has such distinctive colors?

      I’m also wondering how to fit Twenty Thirteen into my intro WordPress class for May, because I’m not at all sure it will suit my students half as well as either Twenty Eleven or Twenty Twelve.

      • Lance Willett 3:15 am on February 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I wish I were 25. :)

        Could you share a screenshot of tiny menu font size? That sounds like a bug.

    • Nathan Reynolds 6:11 am on February 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I am wondering if there is a reason that when I post under the link or quote format the .entry-content is empty so it’s just showing the post-meta.

      I am using the built in boxes for URL in link, and quote/source in quote. I just test to see if the post body will show up and it does, just none of the other boxes I filled out.

      • Lance Willett 4:07 pm on February 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Hi Nathan, are you using trunk 3.6 bleeding edge? That code is brand new, and doesn’t work with Twenty Thirteen yet.

    • bjornsennbrink 7:40 am on February 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Remove hyphens from body.

  • Lance Willett 6:16 pm on November 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: data, theme-unit-test, xml   

    Chip brought up a good point on the http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Unit_Test named XML file — it always looks out of date because of the naming.

    I renamed it to theme-unit-test-data.xml to avoid that confusion.

    It gets updated fairly frequently, probably once a month to fix 404s and add new test data, so when that happens I’ll update the text on the Codex page to the current date and time to reflect that.

    It’s fresh today from the latest export of http://wpthemetestdata.wordpress.com/ — including a quick cleanup to remove unneeded wp:postmeta nodes for values of (_edit_last|superawesome|geo_public|jabber_published|email_notification)

     

    • Jennifer 10:49 pm on December 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Lance,
      A few images are missing from the latest export:
      Failed to import Media “spectacles”
      Failed to import Media “dsc20050315_145007_132”
      Failed to import Media “boat”
      Failed to import Media “dsc20040724_152504_532”
      Failed to import Media “dsc20050604_133440_3421”

      Could someone re-link these images?

  • Lance Willett 10:38 pm on September 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , history, kubrick,   

    Why Default Themes Change Each Year 

    Since Twenty Twelve is coming very soon to the Extend directory, I wanted to share a bit of background on default themes and why they change from year to year.

    In 2005 Kubrick launched as the new default theme, then didn’t change for five years. It became a punchline for the project. With Twenty Ten a new pattern started, with every single year having a new theme, naming it by the year. Twenty ___. This gives the theme an expiration date and it doesn’t have the pressure to be the end-all theme for the ages, because it’ll be replaced in the next year rather than in five years.

    In the time between Kubrick and Twenty Ten the default theme efforts didn’t work too well as there were too many conflicting things. The efforts tried to please everyone: show off everything that’s possible in core, fully educational in every aspect, super nice-looking, and try to solve all the problems a theme can solve.

    Big shoes to fill, as it turns out. Even if one theme can’t do it all, though, the default theme can still strive to be as simple as possible while still sticking to important principles. For example, default themes are coded to be fully internationalized and ready for translation. Even though this effort makes the code more complicated, it’s an important principle in an increasingly globalized world where many people don’t interact with WordPress in English.

    The default theme should show off the latest and greatest features, be flexible enough to gracefully support child themes and encourage customization, work well for a blog or a website, and sport a design that is aesthetically pleasing and a bit different from the last design. Under the hood it should represent the best in coding practices and technical excellence. That said, the default theme isn’t trying to be an end-all-be-all theme. It won’t please everyone.

    To get an idea of how Twenty Twelve is intended to differ from its predecessors, here’s the the core team’s post on which key features they want to see implemented: Core Team Meetup Recap: Default Theme “Twenty Twelve”. Note things like the header image off by default, promoting a static front page, and no featured image in the header. A new look by a different theme designer.

    I think a lot of people are going to really like Twenty Twelve. And Twenty Thirteen. And Fourteen. And … you get the idea.

     

    • Emil Uzelac 10:42 pm on September 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Good stuff Lance!

    • Brent Leavitt 3:55 am on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Thank you for taking to time to walk though this. I appreciate the shift to promote the static page as a home page. I’ve been using WordPress as a full blown CMS for custom website builds. That’s one of the basic switches i do with every theme that I setup. Does this theme set the static page option by default?

    • Noumaan Yaqoob 9:56 am on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I loved 2011 and it is one of my most favorite WordPress themes of all time. Not just because it is visually pleasent with good typography and easy readibility, but mainly because it is so easy to customize and build child themes upon it. I believe that the default themes are the perfect way to learn WordPress theme development. Can’t wait for 2012, which I think is a bit late, its already september when it will be released?

    • Kim Parsell 10:08 am on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Really looking forward to working with Twenty Twelve. :)

      • Lance Willett 10:03 pm on September 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        It’s a fun one. We’re seeing some cool customizations on WP.com already, with just CSS. Pretty neat.

    • jaredatch 8:20 pm on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Well said Lance. You guys have been doing a great job.

      • Lance Willett 10:04 pm on September 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks Jared—it’s been amazing to see it come together, many hands — especially at WCSF hack day; I was blown away at the contributions and couldn’t keep up with them, heh.

    • kathy@lasvegasinfocenter.com 9:26 am on September 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Very informative, Thank you. It is difficult to find a theme that will do everything the web author envisions. But it must be even more difficult to try and accommodate everyone with a default theme.

    • Bachsau 7:01 pm on September 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      For non technical users, a huge problem arises when updates to one of the default themes are released (twentyten, twentyeleven, twentytwelve). People without FTP access and knowledge are stuck a with an english frontend even on localized versions of WordPress. Please include the locals in themes packages, so autoupdate of themes work correctly.

      • Lance Willett 4:53 pm on October 2, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Hi Bachsau, thanks for the comment but that sounds more like a bug report for Trac: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/. Care to open a ticket there so the development team can take action and comment?

      • Lance Willett 4:52 pm on October 3, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Hi again, I asked the core development team and they said this *should* be working with the next release of WP, 3.5 coming out later this year..

    • Freddy K. 4:27 pm on October 2, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Would like to see a working menu in IE8, it only shows a “Menu” button on top and then a list of all menu-entries of the complete menu. As my menus have about 30-40 items, this is not usable on desktop.

      • Lance Willett 9:32 pm on October 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        You can follow along with the theme’s development and improvements over on Trac. We’ve addressed this (and many more fixes) recently.

    • LatestBlogPostsCom 12:59 am on October 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Lance, good article on default themes. Twenty Twelve seems to have it all for the basic WordPress user, but I like learning about all the hooks and template tags to take the basics of Twenty Twelve and twist it into something totally or even slightly different, while using it as a starting point. I do that on AssortedProducts.com.

      Also, Twenty Twelve was the one entity about anything related to web design that got me into HTML 5!

      Bruce

    • richardpd 12:27 pm on February 23, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Lance
      Interesting post. It is a tall order to showcase all new WordPress features in a new theme every year. I personally though would prefer the default theme design to stay the same for a longer period e.g. 5 years and have the new code within that year on year. Kubrick was and still is a classic WordPress theme and did a great job for 5 years. 2010 was a great change of direction but to change design every year for 2011/12/13 etc is a bit too frequent for me. I think WordPress should design a classic flagship theme that can stand the test of time for a 5 year period & that can showcase the new code year on year. I think theme design is more of a personal issue in comparison to code dependent theme function and there are benefits to keeping these seperate elements. Mais, chaque un a sans gout! Tres bonne…Best wishes

  • Lance Willett 11:59 pm on August 24, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Hi everyone. Are you ready for a new default theme? I am. And, now it’s almost ready.

    I submitted a .9 release of Twenty Twelve today—see http://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9199. Theme Check had a few warnings, I noted the reasoning for those in the Trac ticket notes.

    If you have some time this weekend could you go through it? We’ve been cranking on it in core a ton and now it’s time for spit and polish, tightening up documentation, and making sure we covered all the bases.

    Note for themes Trac moderators: This theme should not be pushed live after it’s approved, per instructions from the core development team.

     

    • mercime 12:10 am on August 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      So we should be testing Twenty Twelve on WP 3.4.1 and/or WP 3.5 trunk?

    • Japh 2:17 am on August 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Brilliant, Lance! Very much looking forward to this new theme :)

    • Chantal Coolsma 7:29 am on August 27, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I love it. Already found an issue.

    • Lance Willett 2:55 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Has everyone had a chance to take a look and test?

      Today we’re pushing the theme live on WordPress.com and in the announcement it’d be nice to be able to link to Extend for any self-hosted folks who want to try it out before 3.5 officially comes out.

    • Lance Willett 3:25 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Update: after discussion with Nacin and Matt some more here’s the game plan for releasing to WP.org Extend, soon-ish (say 2-3 weeks).

      1. WPTRT continues to review it and test it, then an admin there approves the theme without pushing it live so it has gone through a round of theme review. Keeping it version .9 as we find bugs and fix them.
      2. Come up with a RC version, say .9.x — Lance will keep submitting to Themes Trac with new test candidates
      3. Nacin will handle letting the core contributor group know, via http://make.wordpress.org/core/ site that we’d like to do a formal launch very soon
      4. Then dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s and make sure it is ready for a final WP.org release.

      At that point we’ll submit a new ZIP with the 1.0 final and that one can be pushed live for everyone, with a possible announcement on WP.org news blog at that point (exact details TBD on how to announce).

  • Lance Willett 6:47 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , tags   

    I’d love your thoughts on adding two new tags to allowed theme tags: see http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21065.

     

    • Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 6:54 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      +1 to both. There’s some ongoing discussion about what the review standards should be for responsive themes, but I see that as a separate issue to the question of having a tag — tags are about the fact that end users want to search for certain features, and responsive design isn’t a concept that’s going away any time soon. And flexible headers is an easy win.

    • Nicholas Weaver 7:25 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I think this is a great idea, not only because its a feature on WordPress.com already but because I often want to change the size dimensions (height more so then width) in twenty ten and twenty eleven as I use those themes for almost everything I do with WordPress.

      Adding the ‘flexible-header’ tag & allowing 3.4 compatible themes the ability to use the custom header feature is a must as far as I am concerned.

      Adding the ‘responsive-width’ tag isn’t a bad idea. I think as people’s expectations of themes, to be responsive, increases, this will be a patch you will have to make down the road, if you decide against it now. Definitely a step in the right direction.

      I appreciate you reaching out to me for my thoughts and I’d love to help out more in whatever way I can!

      side note: :) I apologize for the lack of Weekly Theme Shows as of late, we are really trying to get the right fit and structure down for the show to make it worthwhile to everyone who listens.

      • Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 7:30 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Note that the features are up for grabs and any theme developer to use, and flex headers in particular are already in both Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven — the question here is about adding the tags to the filtered search so users can specifically search for themes that include them.

        • Nicholas Weaver 7:36 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

          Ah, gotcha. Yeah i read trough that track ticket a little to quickly.

          Themes with those abilities are something I actively look for when dealing with clients, hence the heavy usage of twenty ten and twenty eleven. Being able to do a filtered search for themes with these features would be extremely beneficial, save time, and help to better qualify themes for selection/download, in my opinion.

    • Emil Uzelac 9:28 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      There’s no doubt that this isn’t needed, both are definitive (yay).

      To check if Theme is using RWD and how much of that’s true will take as much as time as the standard review. No point really going there, unless there are some obvious issues.

      RWD is not just the layout, it’s everything else around it, such as images, videos, typography etc.

      If an author says that their design is layout super, we can take their word for it. If it’s not it will be classified as false “advertisement” (Theme Description).

      Emil

    • Konstantin Kovshenin 8:30 am on July 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I like both feature tags, though I wouldn’t use “responsive-width” for several reasons:

      • it’s not clear (for the end users) how responsive-width differs from flexible-width
      • media queries can contain max-height too
      • separate stylesheets (and even markup) based on user agent strings (without media queries) achieve the same goals, except that we don’t get that funky effect we all love, when resizing our browser windows :)

      I think the feature should be called mobile-friendly, device-friendly or okay, maybe responsive-layout, but it should not fall under the width column in the tag filter: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/tag-filter/

      Just my two cents :) I’d like to hear your opinion.

      • Lance Willett 1:42 am on July 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Those are good points, it could be hard to explain “responsive-width” from “flexible-width” as you said, but I think it still stands on its own.

        I do think it’s better to add to the width category rather than not adding it at all—themes need to be able to be categorized by having responsive design.

        Should we update the width category to something new? Like “Layout” and change it to fixed, responsive, and fluid? (Flexible is ambiguous—I prefer fluid for themes with a liquid, fluid layout.)

        • Konstantin Kovshenin 2:50 pm on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Reply

          Hi, sorry never subscribed to this thread after posting.

          After discussion on Make Themes, I think a better approach is to rename
          “Widths” terms to “Layout” and change the three allowed values to “Fixed,
          Fluid, Resonsive”.

          Yes please! :)

    • Lance Willett 1:44 am on July 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      By the way—if anyone wants a fun read—we’ve developed a much broader taxonomy for categorizing themes including new terms for Subject and Style: https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/demo/theme-taxonomy.txt.

      It’s in use heavily on http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/ and has been well-received by people looking for themes fitting a certain look or style.

      Someday I’d like to rework the core list to include this, if possible.

    • Lance Willett 5:55 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Update: I split out the “flexible-header” and the proposed changes to width -> layout into a new ticket.

      See http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21442 for the proposal and http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21065 for just the flexible-header change.

    • Lance Willett 11:53 pm on August 24, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      The flexible-header tag is now in core with r21604.

  • Lance Willett 4:06 pm on February 16, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: comments, standards   

    After a prompt from Westi I added a note to Comments template standards on the Theme Development Codex page today.

    The comments.php template file shouldn’t contain function defines unless in a function_exist() check. Ideally all functions should be in functions.php.

    Example case: If comments.php contains function defines and the attachment.php loop assumes only one attachment to display and calls comment_template() each time round, you will get function redefines and fatal PHP errors for “cannot redeclare this function that was previously declared.”

     

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