[wp-hackers] Theme structure

[katie sexton]

Not sure I really understand your idea.  You would want to allow more
"interactive" smart editing of any template?  How would people use a text
editor to "add" things without knowing html?  For some reason I am imagining
people cracking open their interactive theme editor and typing "More like
apple.com, please" and hitting update.  Most themes abide by basic
conventions but as far as div names, structures etc. there is a lot of
variation.

Stuff like left/right sidebar, single column, colors is pretty easy to
change in a specific theme.  Check out hemingway theme
http://warpspire.com/hemingway/ for an example, or this blog post about
creating a theme with options
http://theundersigned.net/2006/06/wordpress-how-to-theme-options/.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Alan Baljeu <alanbaljeu at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm working on building an interactive theme editor.  The idea is that the
> editor would enable definition of various layouts, and support styling.  The
> goal is to enable relative novices to design their own theme, then if they
> find cool stuff somewhere and put it in with a text editor, then the theme
> editor will still be able to work with the modified files.  Obviously, not
> every change can be accommodated, but I'm thinking to cover certain "normal"
> changes.
>
> At this point, I'm just working out the concept.
>
> First though, I want to understand better the structure and conventions of
> a theme.  Obviously, WP generates HTML files using PHP, but in general
> people could do all kinds of wacky things in PHP.  I was wondering if there
> are solid standards about how a page comes together.  For example, are
> functions usually expected to create balanced HTML, or is it common to
> produce unbalanced code that must be closed off by another function?  For
> example, get_header() generates HTML which is incomplete without calling
> get_footer().    In cases like this, I could just pair off the two elements,
> and allow arbitrary stuff to be added between..
>
> How much can a not-totally-stupid editor attempt to understand the
> structure of a document?  What are the gotchas to watch out for?
>
>
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