[wp-hackers] Easytags template system

[Shawn McKenzie]

A month or so ago I introduced myself and let everyone know that I had 
ported my AutoTheme HTML Theme System to Wordpress.  It does exactly 
what you have outlined and more.  As for supporting templates from other 
systems, AutoTheme is already the predominant theme system for PHP-Nuke, 
PostNuke, osCommerce, CRE Loaded shops etc...

I would be happy to answer any questions and provide any 
testing/evaluation help that you might need.

There are thousands of AutoTheme themes on the Internet, both free and 
commercial.  Yes, some are crappy, but some are very nice also.

AutoTheme goes beyond just templating.  It has taken the approach of a 
full theme system that uses templates, not just a template engine or 
language.

Also new is the ability to separate all of the side bar content into 
individual blocks that can be positioned anywhere on the page.  This is 
rudimentary now, but can easily be improved.

I have a demo site up at http://wp.spidean.com.  I would be happy to 
give trusted members of this list admin access to see the functionality 
so far.

Thanks!
-Shawn

Matt Mullenweg wrote:
> Came across this today:
>
> http://businesslogs.com/reviews/movable_type_vs_wordpress_my_opinion.php
>
> It's generally complimentary, but raises the oft-repeated point that 
> people get scared by <?php ... ?> even though most templating systems 
> are functionally equivalent to PHP. (Which I think can be very true.) 
> So I thought I'd throw out an idea I've had baking for quite a while 
> but haven't gotten around to coding: easytags.
>
> Basically the concept is that it's very easy to parse something like 
> <$the_title$> into <?php the_title(); ?>. What if there was a plugin 
> (or in WP core) an option that gave you a "friendly" view when editing 
> templates? On display it could hide all the scary PHP it knows how to 
> parse behind psuedo-HTML tags, and on save turn it back into the PHP 
> that WordPress knows and love.
>
> Version two could have friendly arguments, so <$the_title 
> before="yo"$> maps to the proper function calls. (This would be easier 
> if we had a parse_str or array equiv for all functions with multiple 
> arguments.)
>
> Version three+ doesn't need to be restricted to any one particular 
> syntax. WordPress says <?php potato(); ?>, MT says <$$$potato$$$>, 
> Blogger says <$potatospot$>, and Greymatter mumbles something under 
> its breath about the potato famine... why not let people choose what 
> style they want to use -- or even better yet natively support 
> templates from other systems. It's just another set of regexes. All of 
> a sudden the switching costs to WordPress just dropped as low as we 
> could feasibly take them.
>
> Obscure systems could be support in plugins, it's all just a filter 
> anyway.
>
> There is no additional overhead to WP because it's all stored as PHP 
> at the end of the day (and for every page load). PHP or tags that 
> aren't supported could just be left as-is. It doesn't need to be 
> perfect, just to cover the 80% of each system that people actually use.
>