While the decision to use a landing page Plugin is equally valid, I would consider the choice between Plugin and Theme to be one solely at the user's discretion. And since both Plugin and Theme are equally valid choices, I wouldn't want to exclude landing page Themes.<div>
<br></div><div>Consider also that users looking for landing page Themes may end up looking elsewhere - either to a commercial Theme (not necessarily a bad thing) or to the Wild West (a phenomenally BAD thing). So, we do users a favor merely by providing them the option not to have to look outside the repository for such a Theme.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Chip<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Otto <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:otto@ottodestruct.com">otto@ottodestruct.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Ryan Frankel <<a href="mailto:ryan.frankel@gmail.com">ryan.frankel@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> The main difference I see is just from a user perspective. Personally, if I wanted a landing page I would install WordPress and immediately look for a landing page theme with all of the styling and options I want. Since the design/look/feel of the site itself is centered around the idea of a landing page it seems logical to me to have it as a theme. I don't see any reason that it couldn't also be a plugin but plugins in general (for me) are much more difficult to incorporate stylistically to a theme. Since so much of a landing page is also the stylistic aspect and not functionality it seems like it falls under a theme.<br>
<br>
</div>I agree with this in principle. A specialty theme would be<br>
differentiated from a plugin in that a plugin is designed to be useful<br>
regardless of the theme, whereas a specialty theme would have the<br>
functionality and the display tightly knitted together. For example,<br>
you couldn't easily make a ticket tracking system into a plugin,<br>
because the display of that ticket system is not generic.<br>
<br>
Although this is often a judgment call. The new bbPress plugin does a<br>
pretty darned good job at including a theme compatibility layer to<br>
make it work with most any theme, but as you can see from using it for<br>
a while, a theme that is explicitly designed for bbPress capability<br>
just works and looks better.<br>
<br>
I think one principle that might be useful is to consider whether a<br>
user would expect the same sort of functionality to work with a<br>
different, generic, theme. If not, then a specialty theme makes sense<br>
as a theme instead of a plugin.<br>
<br>
A "landing page" is a bit generic though. Depends on the specific<br>
features. If you define it one way, a "landing page" can be any site<br>
with only one Page defined and no Posts anywhere.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-Otto<br>
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