Andy
Forum Replies Created
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Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Theme document structure(Not sure why my post was moved here… I’m not looking for help. I wanted to float the idea of changing the convention in template document structure to see what others thought about it).
Forum: Requests and Feedback
In reply to: Rationale for default Appearance submenusI don’t want to widgetise the footer for the following reasons.
1. I want clents to be able to easily change the header and footer themselves as they wish. I want the process to be transparent. I’ve already added Header and Background submenus to the Appearance menu – it makes sense to have a Footer submenu too.
2. To fully widgetise the footer, I’d have to create more CSS to adequately deal with the widget options that do not get incorporated into my project.
3. While widgets are currently “in vogue”, I’m not really a fan of the Widgets menu, full stop. I’d rather select which widgets are allowed in various areas of the templates.
4. As I’ve already argued, not having an add_custom_footer function seems to be weird when there are header and background functions.
Forum: Requests and Feedback
In reply to: What Should 2011 Hold for WordPress?What I’d really like to see is a new theme-related function:
add_custom_footer
… (similar to add_custom_image_header and add_custom_background) to provide a Footer submenu under the Appearance menu containing the facility to specify a footer background image or color, and text/markup!
As others have suggested, I’d also like the option to automatically add child pages to menus!
I’d like WordPress to be seen to be a true CMS, not just a blogging tool. To that end, I’d like the Reading Settings to default to the Static page with a Front Page and News Page
Thanks to you all!
Forum: Requests and Feedback
In reply to: Rationale for default Appearance submenusOh yes it does! The header is far more than just a pretty banner at the top of the page.
Esmi – Of course the header is more than a pretty banner… lol
As I am sure you know (better than me), all that a (very basic) theme needs to have is an index.php and style.css file. The required html and php that conventionally resides in the header.php could just as easily be at the top of the index.php file instead. In that sense, a header is not required. Similarly, the required html/php that conventionally resides within footer.php can also be included in the index.php. In that sense, a footer is not required. (Not that I would advocate such an approach to theme design).
All that actually needs to exist within a WordPress theme is a way of retrieving data from the database (i.e. the “loop”). And, of course, navigation if you are going to have more than one page.
Talking about looping, let me start again. I feel that my point has been lost in semantics. (My fault for not making it clearer! Thank you for your patience). Here goes…
– There exists an optional WordPress php theme-related function to provide the facility to swap header images from the dashboard. Likewise, there exists an optional WordPress php theme-related function to swap background colors and images.
– There does not exist an optional WordPress php theme-related function to change footer images/text.The reason I would like this functionality is so that my clients can easily edit their footer without needing to either:
– use an ftp client
– directly edit the footer.php file
– use widgetsI can create the functionality I am looking for manually within the functions.php file. However, I just think it would be a huge time-saver if every web designer in my position didn’t have to all re-produce the same code!
Let me put it this way: when I browse the function reference page and go down to Section 1.7 Theme-related functions, I’d really like to see the following under the Other functions subheading:
add_custom_background
add_custom_footer
add_custom_image_headerSurely, you can see the value of this?
Thanks for reading,
Andy
Forum: Requests and Feedback
In reply to: Rationale for default Appearance submenusThanks for both your comments…
Regarding Ipstenu’s comment I’d say that, technically speaking, a theme does not necessarily need to have a header – yet the functionality exists within WordPress to have custom headers. (Obvious reasons for this, of course!) There is a bit of disparity in not having similar functionality for footers. (Footers are undervalued).
I think Jane hit the nail on the head when she said: “There’s no function built in for custom footers because it’s not something people are clamoring for”.
(I didn’t understand the comment on CSS – perhaps you could clarify… I’ve styled each part of the theme including the footer…)
Since the convention is to design themes to use the get_header and get_footer functions in a modular way, it would be nice if the footer could be given the same treatment as the header.
An interim solution to my problem is to make the footer a widgetised area… However, this does not achieve all my design goals. (I’m not a fan of widgets for a variety of reasons… in this case I want to restrict what functionality my clients will have in different parts of the templates).
I am going to have to re-invent the wheel in this case: add a footer submenu manually and create options for it…
I’d better go now and start clamoring… put my best “footer” forward, step up to the mark and stand firm.