[wp-hackers] Shorthand: Appearance/switching themes?

[Braydon]

On 01/06/2012 06:12 PM, Jane Wells wrote:
> (...)
>
> On 1/6/12 8:42 PM, Lee Rickler wrote:
>> once I deliver a theme to a client the last thing I want is for them 
>> to be able to start adding new themes.
>> Kind of defeats my purpose.
> To be blunt, who cares what you as a vendor want? The person who owns 
> and manages the site is the person our features are designed for. If 
> you don't want them to be able to do things on their own or go with a 
> new theme later on, why not go with a bespoke system or at least 
> something that's hard to use or locked down with permissions? The 
> whole point of WordPress is freedom and ease. If you want to prevent 
> your clients from taking part in that, it's kind of lame.
Freedom is peculiar word. Any time there is an graphical user interface 
for customization of a theme, you loose one freedom and gain another. A 
non-technically proficient person gains ability to make minor changes to 
the theme under a system of rules, yet those features make a program 
more complicated and often times not as easy to work with for beginners 
and veterans, and less easy to maintain. Is the definition of easy and 
freedom of use limited to the GUI? Can it be extended to include ease 
and freedom of the way in which themes are written? Such as an upgrade 
to the template tags, so that they are less rigid and more flexible and 
abstract.... and not depending on a global state of $post.