[wp-hackers] Theme and Plugin Integration

[Robert Deaton]

But you can't have functionality without building it into the style. If 
theme authors didn't include do_action statements, you wouldn't be able to 
add any functionality. The WordPress themes are not based around a template, 
and thus give you the greatest possible freedom, and a side-effect is that 
some theme developers, because they are ignorant of what happens behind the 
scenes, leave some things that are essential to add functionality out of 
their themes.

Plugin developers are having a hell of a time supporting their plugins now 
because theme developers leave actions out, mix everything around, and 
there's no longer a standard way of doing things. Thus, if we can resort to 
a combination of style and functionality, we no longer have to worry about 
it.


On Apr 3, 2005 8:01 PM, Graeme Lennon <graeme at samurai.com> wrote:
> 
> There's something weird going on here. Themes are for look and style,
> not functionality. No theme should require anything other than basic
> WordPress. Why are people even bothering to try to support themes that
> insist on including template tags and functions that may or may not
> exist on any given system?
> 
> Frankly, I don't see the point. Divorce style from functionality. Themes
> are for style, plugins are for functionality. If people want to make
> recommendations, or include CSS in their themes to style the output from
> specific plugins, fine, but code?
> 
> g.
> 
> Jeff Minard wrote:
> > Owen Winkler wrote:
> >
> >> I've attached a core patch that will let theme developers add multiple
> >> "Requires:" header lines to themes. This will allow WordPress to
> >> display what plugins are required for that theme and detect whether a
> >> function from that plugin (thus, the whole plugin) is available. The
> >> format of the header line is:
> >>
> >> Requires: function_name plugin_url description
> >
> >
> > This is a great idea as it would allow us to continue the separation of
> > theme/plugin directories. However...
> >
> >
> >> Please take a minute to consider what including plugin code with a
> >> theme denies the plugin authors - the only real incentive for their
> >> work, credit.
> >
> >
> > You're totally correct. By packageing plugins within a theme, the theme
> > author is likely to recieve credit for a plugins functionality unless
> > they are very explicit in their declaration of who made what on the
> > download page.
> >
> >
> >
> > And I don't care. (And I make plugins, not themes)
> >
> >
> >
> > This is not about ego boosting plugin authors; the solution of bundling
> > plugins with themes is focused on the end user experience. One of the
> > overriding goals of WP as a product is that it's easy to use *for
> > anyone*. Allowing themes to package various plugins would allow theme
> > authors to take advantage of a lot of extra WP features, while still
> > making the process of using that theme very easy for the end user (at
> > any technical level).
> >
> > Your proposition, however, has users getting a theme, reading a bunch of
> > technical info and bouncing from site to site to get the various things
> > they'd need and in the end quite possibly saying, "Fuck it" and going
> > back to Kubrick because it was "click and work".
> >
> > *My* incentive for producing plugins is to give back to the WP community
> > which has given me so much.
> >
> >
> > Jeff
> >
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> >
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-- 
--Robert Deaton
http://somethingunpredictable.com
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