Tonight I researched information on creating Wordpress theme frameworks. The Wordpress Codex actually has some really great information with links to example frameworks as well as some handy tutorials for creating a framework. There’s also this post which is a summary of 20 different frameworks; it provides a good overview of some of the options out there.
Justin Tadlock has written an interesting post about why he created a Wordpress framework. The post covers some of the basics about what some fundamental aspects to a framework should be as well as what the benefits are. It’s definitely worth a read and makes it seem as though we are definitely headed down the right track here.
The frameworks
In terms of code to look at for ideas, one of the more well known frameworks is Thematic. This is a framework created by Ian Stewart that has actually been developed into a business model as well.
Elliot Jay Stocks has also written a framework of his own called Starkers. It takes the premise that a framework ought to provide nothing more than a code base, not even any visual styles. Interesting concept and Stocks is a stellar designer so it might be a good basis for inspiration and ideas.
Carrington is also another framework. This one is interesting because they have also built in a mobile interface for the sites. This could provide an interesting basis for developing mobile versions of client sites we create.
Tutorials and Miscellaneous
There’s also this tutorial which is part of a series that covers how to create and structure your own framework. Some good background information.
Secondly, I researched some information on creating a Wordpress child theme. Since this is how we’ll be handling client-specfic themes we will want a solid understanding of how to accomplish this. First, there is this tutorial which takes the Basic2Col framework as a starting point and walks you through how to build a child theme off of it.
Finally, this post looks at why child themes are the future of Wordpress. It also includes a solid list of example frameworks and articles about frameworks and what they can do for development.
That’s a quick highlight of some of the most popular frameworks and posts to give a quick introduction to creating our own.
The whole goal of the Edit Flow Project was to build a bunch of different pieces in to WordPress that made the editorial workflow side of things a lot more seamless. Mo said he’s back in the game so we’re going to start working on some of the most requested features: email notifications and post-specific editorial comments.
In an email, Andrew Spittle said that, for the Whitman Pioneer:
The most important thing that I see from our end would be the ability to designate editors for specific sections/categories and have them sent email updates (single or digest) of the activity in their section. I think that of everything that would turn it into something that creates an online workflow for us instead of just an online place to do work (I hope that distinction kind of makes sense). Another thing that’d be great (perhaps you’ve already implemented this…I haven’t been keeping track of updates) would be the notes feature that we talked about at the beginning of the project. If this is done in a smooth and user-friendly way than I think that editors and reporters alike would be more inclined to use it. Also, if the notes are custom fields in the post then it would be kind of cool to be able to pull these out and display them.
Daniel Randolph wants to see “something like edit flow has where we have custom statuses that say ‘needs edited’ and things of that nature.” In addition, specific notifications to pre-defined people when a post hits a particular status is important.
Continue reading ‘Mid-August Edit Flow update: Email notifications and editorial comments’
Mo Jangda, Andrew Spittle, and I had a short conference call yesterday to discuss two things: one, how labor is going to be divided on the project, and two, how we’re going to split up work for the first stage of Edit Flow, custom statuses. Mo has done a good job on outlining the technical design for stage one, although it looks as though we’re probably going to have to break into some private WordPress functions.
In the next few days, I’m going to get the shell of the plugin up on GitHub so that everyone can start working on different parts. I’m going to work on writing a function that will tap into and alter WordPress core statuses, and Mo will do the plugin settings page. Andrew is going to start mocking up stage two because there isn’t too much UI stuff that needs to be done now.
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Friday afternoon, Andrew Spittle, Drew Geraets, Mo Jangda, Lauren Rabaino Tom Altman, and Jason Kristufek joined me on a Skype conference call to start wrapping the ideas we’ve generated for a better editorial workflow for WordPress into more concrete deliverables that can be used to draft a spec.
This was the first time Tom and Jason had been able to join the discussion, so we kicked the conference call off by discussing their use of WordPress with Gazette Communications. Tom has more of the code expertise, while Jason has a lot of experience with WordPress. At the moment, Gazette Communications is running twelve to thirteen websites with WordPress. Most of them are niche websites with one to two people interacting with the admin, but they have a few where more people are involved (Iowa.com as an example). In the near future, their flagship Gazette Online website will be moving to WordPress and will have 12 to 15 people working within the admin.
Continue reading ‘Discussing WordPress Editorial Admin Features’
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Max Cutler, Andrew Spittle, Mo Jangda, Eric Eldon, and Drew Geraets joined me on Skype this morning to discuss different ideas for improving the WordPress admin for newsrooms. The audio has our entire conversation, which had a number of really legit ideas, but I’d like to share some of the core takeaways.
One, there’s big opportunity to build functionality into the WP dashboard that offers a stream, or river rather, of data about the activity going on with the website. This type of information might include data on posts that have new statuses, posts that need editing, authors logging in and out of the CMS, or new comments from the community. The user’s exposure to this river of data would be dependent on the people they’re “following” (i.e. if they’re a sports reporter then they’d be following the section editor and other beat reporters) and their area of expertise (sports vs. A&E vs. environment). A few intermediate steps to getting to this point are building the functionality to aggregate activity within WordPress (which something like Audit Trail already has pieces of), creating an RSS pipe of the information, and then building the interface in the admin that would either live on the dashboard or near it. Eventually, it could even become as complex as the new Friendfeed Beta.
Continue reading ‘Improving WordPress’s admin for newsrooms’
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