The latest craze in WordPress are theme frameworks. There’s a reason so many people are talking about and creating them. A theme framework allows you to quickly and easily create a new custom theme, while building on top of a very sturdy foundation. And the addition of child themes to WordPress has made it possible to upgrade the framework, without having to change anything to the theme that is using that framework.
In order to advance this site, I’ve been planning a major design upgrade. So be prepared for some changes in the coming weeks. I started with some research into theme frameworks. There are many, but here are three I liked:
- Hybrid is probably the best documented of all frameworks. There are many pages with clear instructions available. The only downside: if you want to access that info, you have to become member of the “theme club” At $25 per year it is very affordable.
- The Buffet framework caught my attention because its default template is very pretty. It has everything you might wish (including breadcrumbs) right out of the box in a very nicely designed template. The documentation side is a bit lighter though, so you might need some previous framework/child theme experience.
- In the end, I picked the Thematic theme framework. Its features closely match many of the previous frameworks. What set Thematic apart is its community. There’s a very lively discussion going on with many people asking and answering questions. Which is always useful.
Whichever of the above frameworks you pick, I’m sure you’ll be happy. I would even suggest that your next theme does start from a child theme. Many of things you might not want to worry about are already solved for you (SEO for one thing).
If you are a WordPress blogger, I have a few questions for you: Are you already using a framework? Which one and why?
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[...] The Thematic theme framework is an incredible useful and solid foundation to build on. Creating a child theme is child’s play and you immediately get all the good stuff of Thematic. Adapting it’s CSS is even easier. Messing with the functions was a little harder, but I didn’t need to change a lot. [...]