Skellie

Theming wordpress while staying sane

https://github.com/thanosp/Skellie

Problem #1 - Picking a theme

1. Tons of ready-to-use themes

   Building a custom theme based on a working one offers no control over the project.

2. Skeleton/blank themes

   Most have 10+ functions that are used within their templates heavily. Some even print html.
   Others require theme configuration in the database. Eventually they fall into the previous category.

3. We keep experimenting with technologies.

   Amonst things we've tried: boilerplate with custom css, grid 960, scss, compass...
   We keep learning and experimenting with new shinies.

4. Requirements vary per project.

   Content changes, order of elements change, wrappers are required in order to style them to our needs.

5. Practically nothing stays the same accross projects

Problem #2 - get_template_part

The wordpress way of reusing code within a theme.

Code included with get_template_part lives within its own scope with most wordpress globals preloaded.

The "cleanest" way of communicating information to a template part is...

Problem #3 - Structure

GOOD: Wordpress custom post types are very useful for building custom themes. <?php get_template_part('single', get_post_type()); ?>

BAD: Wordpress forces you to put all templates and template_parts in the theme's root directory.

Problem #4 - WP Templates

• Meant for differentiating the way a specific page looks like.

  Example: A page (post_type = 'page') is rendered by page.php unless a different template is set.

• Also end up in the theme's root directory.

• WP template ~ ZF layout [with extra headers/footers/sidebars]

  Lots of duplicate wrapping code

  headers/footers/sidebars are also template parts [theme's root directory...]

Skellie as a skeleton

• PHP 5.3 because we can
• No css or js attached. Enqueue action in place but empty.
• No menus, sidebars or thumbnails. Action with sample code in comments.
• No functions in functions.php
• 1 closure to take over rendering from wordpress
• No wrapping code in place for the default WP templates

Skellie view objects

• Skellie templates are like wordpress templates except that...
• Every template has a layout [configurable with a comment or default]
• The layout wraps around the template and prints the template within it.
• Layouts, templates and partials are all objects with some default vars
• Layouts, templates and partials can all use partials
• Partials are like template parts but smarter

Skellie Layouts and Templates

• Layouts are located in theme-dir/layouts
• If no layout is chosen it picks the default layout

Skellie layout example (homepage)

Skellie directory structure

• theme-dir only for templates
• theme-dir/layouts for layouts
• theme-dir/partials for partials

Conventions

• partials/preview for article excerpts
• partials/content for full article contents
• partials/list for sections with article collections
• partials/menu for navigation menu's
• partials/sidebar for sidebars (dynamic sidebars preferred)
• partials/paginate for pagination (next, prev, numeric, browse-more)

Conclusion

• header.php & footer.php cannot be removed (have been made blank)
• Plugins are not affected but cannot use it either
• No dependencies. Minimal damage to wordpress [1 filter]
• Not made as a plugin on purpose

Source on github: https://github.com/thanosp/Skellie