Now, the ticket evolved from that first sketch of an idea, and I ultimately abandoned the concept of using actions and remove_action to change what options get used. But the current approach is, I think, a pretty powerful way to approach theme options development so that things can be reused or abandoned in child themes and it isn’t something that I’ve seen other people doing. (To be fair, this is actually what’s described in the WordPress Codex, but I haven’t seen it in action on very many theme options pages, or any tutorials talking about how one would go about writing a theme options page, so I thought it was worth writing about.) And it reduces my entire theme options down to this code:

So let’s take a look at what we’re doing in ap_core_do_theme_options…

First of all, I’ve pulled out all the code and put it into a new file called option-setup.php. This handles all the stuff that was previously where the _do_theme_options function is now but everything has been pretty drastically rewritten. First we have ap_core_do_theme_options which looks like this:

If you’ve tried or are currently using Museum Core, you’ll already know that the theme options page sports some tabs. So the first function we’re calling in _do_theme_options is the tab setup. This is a pretty straightforward function that just spits out the html needed to set up the tabs. The real meat is in the next three functions. We won’t look at every single function, we’ll just dig into the main highlights so you get an idea of what’s going on. Let’s peek at ap_core_general_settings which handles the, wait for it, general settings tab.

ap_core_general_settings looks an awful lot like ap_core_do_theme_options, with a bit of HTML thrown in to set up the table that’s going to hold the actual options. That uniformity is intentional, the idea is that you can swap functions in and out however you want. You can use your own modified version of ap_core_general_settings in your child theme, or you can do away with the tabs and just put all your options straight into ap_core_do_theme_options. Or you can mix and match options from the various settings tabs and create your own tabs, it’s up to you. Let’s take a look at what an individual option looks like now.

That’s got a bit more heft to it. But it’s still pretty basic. All I did here is pull the table row from the original theme-options.php and added it to this function. I’m using output buffering to store all the php/html as a variable and echoing the variable at the end which is what gets sent to the function calling this function (in this case ap_core_sidebar_option). I’m also calling the defaults and options from the database so our values are loaded and stored. This is done ad nauseum for each setting, so each setting gets called separately and can be isolated, grouped, cut out, whatever as needed by a child theme.

So what happens when I want to build a child theme and use some of these options? Here’s an example:

First what I’m going to do is start with a new theme options function. I’m keeping the 3 tabs from Core, but I’m adding a 4th tab. Since Core only supports 3 tabs, and I’ll need to set up the title for the fourth tab, I’m doing my own tabs. We’ll start by setting up the tabs. Remember, you don’t have to use the tabs at all; if you just want all of your options on the Theme Options page, you can just cut out the tabs function and then they’ll display normally, one on top of the other.

The two things that are changed are highlighted by the fact that the textdomain (‘museum-core’, ‘my-theme’) has changed. We don’t need to change the textdomain of the other tabs, because, assuming the text was translated in a language file, those would already be covered by the existing translation in Core — only the new translation strings need to be added (of course, none of this is necessary, really, if you don’t care about localization of your child theme). We changed “Typography & Fonts” to “Font Stuff” and added the fourth tab, “Custom Tab”. So far, so good. This is what it looks like:

Now, in order for this to be actually functional, we’d need to define some new options for our theme so we could store them in the database, this is just meant to be an example and illustrate how we’re able to still pull functions from the parent theme and mix them into our custom theme functions. Here’s what that new tab looks like:

To summarize, what I’ve got is a modular way of calling individual settings that can be swapped in and out at will and replaced with custom settings (or not) however you want. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to post in the comments. If you’d like to dig into the source files, you can grab the latest version of Museum Core from GitHub. You can also take a look at the complete code from this tutorial on GitHub. And if you want to take a look at the files on your computer and hack them up, you can download the source files used to create the child theme in the screenshots here.

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After Years Of Trying To Kill YouTube, Movie Studios Are Embracing & Profiting From It | Techdirt.

(via @isohunt)

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The Weekly WordPress Theme Release Roundup | WPCandy.

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If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you may already know that we recently released our first theme to the official WordPress repository.  It’s called Museum Core.

Museum Core is the product of over a year of development.  A solid foundation built on responsive design, HTML5 and CSS3, with a theme options page that is secure and flexible.  It also supports localization into any language you want.  In less than a month, it’s already been downloaded more than 3,000 times.

Core marks the beginning of our shift in scope for Museum Themes.  Rather than maintaining dozens of different themes independently, all themes, past and future, will become child themes of Core.  Additionally, we’ll be using Core to build WordPress versions of our most popular and favorite Blogger templates — we’ve already released WordPress versions of Grandma’s Hat Box and dear Audrey, and more are on the way.  Soon all our themes will be driven by the powerful Core framework, while maintaining the same level of customization options they currently offer.

Exciting things are coming in the next few months for Museum Themes.  For now, here’s our promo video for Core and some more information about what it supports.

Here’s a list of some of the features in Museum Core:

• customizable sidebar (left or right)
• full posts or excerpts on main blog page and archive pages (excerpts support post thumbnails)
• customizable footer text (no hard-coded author credit)
• five typeface options for 3 different locations (headings, body and alternate) with an eye for international language support
• customizable link colors via an easy-to-use color-picker
• custom favicon
• optional support for Twitter hovercards
• responsive design that supports smaller screens and mobile
• supports all WordPress post formats with different layouts optimized for each
• internationalization support.  Complete Polish translation in 1.0.9 courtesy of anemoone.

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Tracklist:

Eskmo – Cloudlight
Gramatik – DreamBIG
MJ Cole – I See
Boards of Canada – 1969
cEven kEy – Shortwave Connector
Pretty Lights – Keep ‘Em Bouncin’
Daft Punk – End of Line (Photek Remix)
Goldfrapp – Alive (Dave Aude Remix)
BT – Loving You More (BT’s Final Spiritual Journey)
Logical Disorder – Come to me I wanna show you something
Beck – Where It’s At (UNKLE Remix)
Luscious Jackson – Space Diva
Jill Cunniff – Lazy Girls
The Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy, Hey Girl
The Crystal Method – Murder
Moby – If Things Were Perfect
Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians (Coldcut Remix)

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The first thing I had to address was that I was _doing_it_wrong, at least in terms of i18n. I was dealing with typefaces from a programmer’s and a designer’s standpoint — not from the standpoint of someone actually looking to use the theme in another language. While I could say “yes, this theme supports translations” I wasn’t doing it in a way that was actually very supportive. A designer/developer will look at a font file and try to cut the file size as much as possible to decrease page load time. One way to do this is to strip out non-latin characters. That’s great for English speakers, but it means that everyone else is left in the lurch. Rather than rebuilding my font files with the extra characters included, 1.0.9 is letting Google handle the heavy lifting of supplying the fonts because, presumably, their servers will serve the entire character set faster than yours will.

The second thing is typeface design. I will freely admit that I have my own tastes as far as typefaces go, and that colors the fonts used in the themes that I build. I have a strong dislike for Times New Roman, for example, and while I like Georgia, I feel it’s over used. While it’s not my favorite serif typeface (that would probably fall to Goudy Bookletter 1911, but that didn’t really fit with the clean and modern design of Core), I included PT Serif in Core as a serif option because it has many similarities to Times and Georgia while not being too spindly (like Times) or wide (like Georgia). However, all of that goes out the window when you are looking at a typeface in a different language. Our eyes naturally follow the shape and contours of the letters in our own language, but I couldn’t tell you what an attractive type in Poland would be. Not only do the letterforms follow some different rules, but there are different tastes and preferences in what an attractive typeface is. So when I was told that some of my embedded fonts didn’t support Polish characters, I asked what a good font for the Polish language was, and was pointed in the direction of Lato, by a Polish designer. To me, it just looks like a bit of a squat sans-serif (at least when compared with Droid Sans), but who am I to judge its ability to display Polish characters like ł and ą in an attractive and readable way?

We all interpret words differently. We bring different experiences to the act of reading an article or blog post, so different things will resonate with each of us. What we as designers and developers (especially for open source software that may be used in other parts of the world that we may never have even considered — as opposed to client work for a specific person or organization in a native-language-speaking country) may not appreciate is that the same rules apply to type and design — what is seen as attractive and appealing in Tokyo is certainly not the same thing as what we see as attractive and appealing in Utah. The internet is making the world more of a melting pot than it was before as styles and trends from one part of the world affect preferences in another. Even so, individual preferences and tastes will always be unique, making design a unique challenge when you are trying to appeal to a range of potential users.

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If you signed up to sponsor/donate to/pre-order the album and you have not received a download code email me at chris at jazzsequence dot com and I will send it over.  Otherwise, you can buy the album for 5 bucks here: The Signal.

You can also read the post I wrote on Percussa's blog about the project.  
The Signal: an Experimental Electronic Music Project using Percussa AudioCubes

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The Signal: an Experimental Electronic Music Project using AudioCubes

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I’m really excited about this theme. Not just because it’s badass and not just because I spent over a year developing it. Those things, too. But because…wait, no, it’s pretty much because it’s badass. I learned a lot through the whole process, particularly the theme review process, and it took over a month of revising and revising to get this (my first (accepted) submission to the repository) actually hosted on WordPress.org. It’s no small feat. It requires dedication, the ability to take criticism, and willingness to adhere to WordPress’ (high) standards. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back. I say that because it’s effing hard. Okay, yeah, and to pat myself on the back. A little bit. But possibly WordPress says it best on their page about why you would want to host your themes on WordPress.org:

The goal of our themes directory isn’t to have every theme in the world, it’s to have the best.

That’s their words, not mine. I certainly wouldn’t call my theme the best. But it’s damn fine (if I do say so myself) and I’m going to stand behind it and show it off for a little bit by making it the theme for my website. I’m allowed to do that. If you want to download it, go get it here: Museum Core.

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