[wp-hackers] Some Theme Changes

[Mark Jaquith]

Chris Davis wrote:

>Yeah I understand where it is and what it does, I just was not
>understanding why this should be something the user is being forced to
>do via an editor when it could be just as easily set via the control
>panel in a user friendly way using the_head or something similiar.
>
I'm the one who submitted the bug that resulted in this change, so let 
me elaborate:

Sometimes external applications need access to WordPress functions.  For 
instance, I have MagpieRSS "include" WordPress and then download my 
blogroll, grab the feeds of everyone on my blogroll, and then parse them 
accordingly.  The themes behavior of WordPress can sometimes "take over" 
if this is done, and redirect to the theme page.  So for backwards 
compatibility, this theme define needs to be set before themes will 
"take over."

The alternative was to define something if you _don't_ want themes to 
take over... but that would break previously written applications that 
work by including wp-blog-header.php

If you have a custom template now as your main index.php file, it's 
fine... you aren't using themes, so you don't need the define.  But if 
you _are_ using themes, then there isn't anything in your main index.php 
file anyway... no customizations, that is.  So every time you upgrade 
WordPress, you should be upgrading that index.php, along with all other 
WordPress files you haven't modified.

So the only people who will really need to go in and edit stuff are 1.2 
upgraders who want to use themes... and they'll have to get under the 
hood making their custom index.php file into a theme anyway... so I 
think this is a good approach.