[wp-hackers] wp-sidebar.php - In or Out? [was Re:1.3a2 CVS]

[Matt Mullenweg]

Kitty wrote:
> So, Matt, Ryan, & the rest of the team,
> 
> It seems like everyone that has an opinion has weighed in, so what's the
> word from the devs? In or out?

I was just waiting to see everyone's thoughts before saying anything. I 
think separating out the sidebar is a good idea. We already ship with a 
simplified template (wp.php) and there's no reason this couldn't become a 
combined version of the split up template, commented so everyone can 
understand what's going on.

Current combined templates will work just fine. I think the includes are a 
good way to introduce people to a basic and easy to use feature of PHP, as 
well as make the pages functionality a lot more natural. Obviously it's 
not done yet (the template editor needs to be updated, for example) but I 
think once people get the idea that they can just drop in templates for 
different types of pages (or not) that won't be overwritten in upgrades 
they'll like it.

There is an education aspect to this. I know a few web designers who are 
otherwise competent but they use MT for every site because that's the only 
way they know to separate out headers and footers (using MT's include 
template tag). Just like the quicktags gently teach people HTML if they 
want to learn, this will gently introduce some basic PHP concepts.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
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