[wp-hackers] child themes of child themes (grandchildren)

[Ben Lobaugh]

I agree with all three points! In fact I forwarded the classification 
message to several people in the Seattle community. Someone should 
definitely do a post about it :)


On 11/9/12 10:25 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> Hi Mika,
>
> Thanks for taking the time to explain.
>
> Good classifications are often very helpful, especially if the terms are broadly known and well understood.  If people are choosing the wrong theme because they like it looks and not because of it having the proper architecture then providing guidance for users could result in fewer wrongly picked themes and fewer unhappy users.  I think WordPress currently has a bit of the "hammer-nail" problem with respect to themes.
>
> So your classification sounds like:
>
> 1.) Good: A great blog post from you,
> 2.) Better: An article on Codex that gets consensus from the core docs team,
> 3.) Best: A discussion on Make with interested parties to nail down these so these terms and their distinctions and with adoption by theme vendors so people can use these well-known terms and theme vendors can advertise their themes as being of a certain type in order to educate their would-be customers.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -Mike
>
> On Nov 9, 2012, at 12:48 PM, Mika A Epstein <ipstenu at ipstenu.org> wrote:
>
>> I don't know if they're official by any means, but I started looking into the different kind of themes and came up with these:
>>
>> A Theme: TwentyEleven etc.
>>
>> Stands on it's own but you can make a child if you have to.
>>
>> tl;dr: The 'traditional' theme that everyone thinks of.
>>
>> A Theme Framework: _s, Bootstrap, Hybrid.
>>
>> Used to build a parent theme off of. No one actually uses the theme as a theme on it's own without forking and adding in their bells and whistles. These are generally turned into full-blown themes, and use the normal parent/child relationships. The framework itself is not a stand-alone theme, however, and the person who builds their parent theme off a framework is responsible for updating their theme when the framework is updated.
>>
>> tl;dr: You use a framework to build a theme.
>>
>> A Managed Theme: Genesis, Thesis (I'm missing some, I have a longer list on my other computer)
>>
>> These themes are not intended for children themes! Everything that you should be doing is within the WP Dashboard. All CSS tweaks, and even functions, can be added there-in. Sometimes these are just parent themes that you don't make children off of, ever, and others are children themselves of a framework. The best ones have a way to export your theme settings. To make things easier, you'll find a lot of plugins that do what most people want, and they never need to edit code.
>>
>> tl;dr: Don't touch the theme code files.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Obviously there's some crossover with these, but I tend to slap those labels on the 'top' level theme, so since the Genesis parent theme is clearly managed, it's a managed theme, even though it acts like a framework in some respects.
>>
>> When a managed theme doesn't meet your needs, then you have the wrong child and need to either fork the closet one to suit your needs, or build your own.
>>
>> Mike Schinkel wrote:
>>> On Nov 9, 2012, at 12:32 PM, Mika A Epstein<ipstenu at ipstenu.org> wrote:
>>>> Genesis is a managed theme, vs a 'traditional' theme framework.
>>>
>>> That's the first time I've heard such a named distinction. To ensure I and maybe others don't misunderstand would you be so kind as to define those terms and then compare and contrast them?
>>>
>>> -Mike
>>>
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