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Thematic Theme Options Page Development

(9 posts)

  1. em hr
    Moderator

    Thematic is getting an Options Page revamp. The new options will likely be pluggable/filterable but not include any more options at the onset if ever.

    My goal here is to get a read on how you all are using options in your child themes to see how Thematic can both help and stay out of the way. So here are my questions to Thematic child-theme devs and Thematic child-theme users.

    • Q1: What types of options do you typically add to your child themes?
    • Q2: Do you use custom field input to customize your child theme? (if so, give examples)
    • Q3: Do you validate input on user submitted settings?
    • Q4: What aspects of Thematic would you like to control via the options page?

    Here is a suggested format for answers. Please be brief and to the point.

    A1: answer to q1
    A2: answer to q2
    A3: answer to q3
    A4: answer to q4

    Commentary: feel free to discuss it further

    Posted 8 years ago #

  2. Danieliser
    Member

    * Q1: What types of options do you typically add to your child themes?
    * Q2: Do you link theme options input to custom field input from the post/page write panel? (with example)
    * Q3: Do you validate input on user submitted settings?
    * Q4: What aspects of Thematic would you like to control via the options page?
    A1 - Header Image, Headspace2, Meta Tags for Search Engines, Favicon, Analytics etc.
    A2 - Not sure i understand the question. I would prefer in the options table if i understand that right.
    A3 - Almost always. At least checking for invalid input.
    A4 - If you made it pluggable so that we can add custom options with only a few lines in an override style function. i have set up many small tweaks i use all the time and would like to be able to make them a quick plugin with options to turn the ones you want on instead of having to manually comment out the includes()

    Posted 8 years ago #

  3. em hr
    Moderator

    Sorry that was rushed and poorly stated I have edited the q2 to be more specific. Hopefully that clears things up. No need to restate the questions.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  4. Devin
    Member

    A1: I know this doesn't answer the question directly, but text input, textarea, radio, select, image uploader, and colorpicker. This doesn't need to be baked in, but examples for how to do Typography, and backgrounds (with image, repeat-x, etc) using those inputs would be helpful.

    A2: I haven't needed to link them, but an easy way to add custom metaboxes would be helpful.

    A3: Generally, no, aside from verifying that an image is an image. But it would be useful to have a mechanism to check if the input and make sure e-mail address is actually an e-mail address, etc. I could think of many situations where that would be important.

    A4: I really don't need anything added to the options panel, the main thing is that I can alter it to fit my child theme.

    It might be useful for end users to be able to select their layout (2 col, 3 col, etc). This could be done by adding a body class and would also allow us condense all the different layout stylesheets into the main one. However, the drawback is that it would affect child themes and add complexity. So, this one is debatable.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  5. em hr
    Moderator

    @Devin Yeah the bodyclass bit is nifty. I have some stylesheets buried somewhere that were designed explicitly for this. I wrote a tutorial on it a while back that ties the bodyclass to customfield input; but it never saw the light of day. Anyone interested in seeing it?

    BTW this is exactly what I would describe as an example for Q2.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  6. Danieliser
    Member

    I have actually developed a small plugin that is capable of building custome meta write panels with many options. You can have Panels, SubPanels, Many different form options and all with header and description options. I havent created an admin area yet for it but would be willing to contribute the basics if i can get some help developing the admin interface and finishing adding form options/cleaning up the code.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  7. em hr
    Moderator

    Thanks Danieliser :) If you're interested in sharing code the Thematic google code site is the place to do it. You can file a report for enhancement and link to a pastie or even add the code as an attachment.

    -Gene

    Posted 8 years ago #

  8. sfrangos
    Member

    Hi Gene -

    Q1: What types of options do you typically add to your child themes?
    Q2: Do you use custom field input to customize your child theme? (if so, give examples)
    Q3: Do you validate input on user submitted settings?
    Q4: What aspects of Thematic would you like to control via the options page?

    Here is a suggested format for answers. Please be brief and to the point.

    A1: answer to q1: I think you mean on the Thematic Options page? None, right now, but we do get requests for headers.
    A2: answer to q2: Again, we would appreciate an easy way to add some custom field options via functions.php.
    A3: answer to q3: Not clear what you are after on this one.
    A4: answer to q4: Custom Headers, custom backgrounds, add analytics code

    - Scott

    Posted 8 years ago #

  9. mrmikeman
    Member

    I usually work with using a Featured Image layout, instead of a list like blog feal and its hard to style it properly, there are a few standard featured image layouts that would be nice to be able and just switch on..

    Posted 8 years ago #

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