[theme-reviewers] add_theme_page()

[Sayontan Sinha]

>
> Ideally, it would still have just one Theme Options page under
> appearance, and then use tabs or something else on its own page to
> separate the options out.
>

This is much easier said than done. I have been working towards getting tabs
in place on one page (multiple calls to add_theme_page makes things look
quite ugly), but there are simply too many limitations with the whole API to
make this work effectively. Let me try to explain.

*The Scenario:*
My theme has several options. Putting them all on one page causes a lot of
issues, like sluggishness of the back-end and interference with PHP-Suhosin
protection settings (though Suhosin can be tweaked). I originally had a
2-level tab system, with horizontal tabs at the top for different sections
of settings, then vertical tabs within each section (that is similar to the
kind of settings that the other folks are talking about). The tabs were all
handled by JQuery. This works fine with a small number of options, but with
a large number of options, the sluggishness shows up in the back-end. That
was when I removed the horizontal tabs at the top level and used
add_menu_page and add_submenu_page.

But with the recent enforcements of new rules and recommendations, I have
had to do some major rework. I first rewrote the options framework to use
the Settings API, but still with add_menu_page and add_submenu_page. Now I
am rewriting again to get rid of the additional menu and roll it back to how
the look was earlier, but with a difference: the entire set of options will
not be loaded into browser memory in JQuery tabs. Instead, I will try to
fetch each page as it is clicked, like the Theme Installation page in WP.

*My attempts:*

   1. I first simply created one options page, then included a set of links
   at the top.
   *Issue:* Getting the links to behave as belonging within WP. E.g. If your
   admin panel is at http://host.com/wp-admin, your theme options page could
   be at http://host.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=my-options. The tabs,
   however cannot be given links through the admin panel. In other words, to
   get a URL such as
   http://host.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=my-sub-options-1, I HAVE to use
   add_theme_page. If I don't use add_theme_page, the page isn't added to the
   whitelist and will not show up. I cannot use other URLs, because then I will
   have something like this:
   http://host.com/wp-content/themes/my-theme/my-sub-options-1.php, which is
   just not done.
   2. To get around the above, I decided to bundle AJAX with the options
   page. So I have one options page accessible through
   http://host.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=my-options. In there I have 5
   links, each of which invokes AJAX to load the specific options page, while
   staying in http://host.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=my-options. This way
   I only need to whitelist the main page.
   *Issue:* Getting settings_fields() to generate _wp_http_referer different
   from admin-ajax.php. This is causing options.php to return
   admin-ajax.php?updated=true, which is not what I want. This is where I am
   stuck right now, but hopefully I will get over the hurdle soon.

I am looking forward to completing this exercise, so that other developers
can learn from my (rather harsh) experience here.

Cheers,
Sayontan.

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Rahul Bansal <rahul286 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What if theme offers so many options that it need to contains 4-5
> subpages?
>
> Ideally, it would still have just one Theme Options page under
> appearance, and then use tabs or something else on its own page to
> separate the options out.
>
> Realistically, I'd say a theme with that many options is too complex
> to begin with. Themes should be about the look of the site, not crazy
> functionality. Break the functionality parts out into plugins that go
> along with the theme or something like that.
>
> -Otto
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>



-- 
Sayontan Sinha
http://mynethome.net | http://mynethome.net/blog
--
Beating Australia in Cricket is like killing a celebrity. The death gets
more coverage than the crime.
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