[wp-hackers] front-page.php always overrides home.php?

[Austin Matzko]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:
> Okay, so "deprecated" was probably a bad choice of term. Unnecessary,
> perhaps, since index.php serves all the same functions as well as
> being a backup to every other page as well.

Sometimes unnecessary, but sometimes helpful.  It's quite possible
that you would want to be able to generate unique markup for the home
page without having that same template be used as the fallback for
singular post objects, whether they be posts or pages or something
else.  It can make things simpler.  And the home.php template is
closer in purpose to a category template than a singular template,
because it deals with objects in the aggregate.

Strictly speaking only style.css and index.php are "necessary."
Please be careful about saying things like  "home.php is deprecated"
to the theme reviewers. :-)

> There's nothing you can do
> with a home.php that you can't do without it, usually more cleanly.

I don't think of extra logic branches in index.php as being
particularly clean, but I'll admit that's more a matter of taste.

> BTW, Page Templates don't work for Posts set to be on Page urls.

You're right.  That smells like a bug.