Hi guys I have started work on a free WordPress theme framework and I don’t have a huge amount of experience with them and I’m wondering if anyone has feedback on what would be some good features to include.
Basically the idea is to make it quicker for us to build new themes and then make it available to other developer to do the same thing (then get their input on improving it).
I basically want the framework to provide the ability for people to set up the structure, styles, layout etc of a WordPress site all via the theme options as easily as possible. This would be a benefit to the developer who can build the basic size quickly without getting into the code and the ultimate user of the site who can tweak the design elements easily once they are managing the site.
The features I’m thinking of starting with are below but I’m keen to know what people think. Once we make it available I hope to grow it by taking on people’s suggestions for new features.
- General settings - logo / header replacement, favicon, tracking code, footer text
- Layout - Choose from pre-defined layouts, drag to customise the layout (i.e. resize columns) and apply different layouts to different pages
- Widgets - Have a drag and drop widgets area where you can specifically manage the display of widgets on different pages by dragging and dropping them into place (you could see them visually in place, page by page as opposed to the inbuilt widgets system) - pages that aren’t specifically modified will pick up the default widget display.
- Design - Change the colour and texture of main elements (main page, background, sidebar, header, footer), change fonts, sizes and colours for main elements (Slider, H1-4, body) looking at Google fonts if it’s not too hard
- Homepage - Set page or post, enable or disable slider using custom post type, dynamic thumbnails
All feedback welcome, thanks in advance.
Dan