Bill Kracke

What Makes a Good WordPress Theme? Why?

An excellent question has been posted over at performancing.com : What makes a good WordPress Theme?

The question that naturally springs up in my mind is “Who are you trying to sell it to?”

Developers / Designers

I couldn’t think of an all-inclusive label to describe the folks that like to “get under the hood” of WordPress and really have some fun. These folks are just as likely to create a custom solution as they are to spend any money on a theme someone else created. So what could they possibly want in a theme?

• Built on best practices. If I am going to spend the time customizing someone else’s theme, I don’t want to have to worry about hacks or strange custom code that might be hiding somewhere. If I, the original theme developer, want to include javascript effects and AJAX goodness, I’d use jQuery or a similar framework and clearly state what I am using. I’d be clear about what browsers I support (especially IE6 — filters? hacks? javascript? conditional comments?).
• Enough hooks, but not too many. A WordPress theme aimed at CSS gurus would have all sorts of dynamically generated classes, so I can just slice up a PSD, write some CSS and move on. If you are trying to appeal to PHP coders, however, you’d better have a clearly documented/commented functions.php file, so I can turn off all the non-semantic classes I never want to use. Themes like Thesis give hooks that I can use to customize layout, content areas, and more, but if I’m a CSS guy who is terrified of opening my functions.php, maybe those options should be selectable in a admin area control panel.
• Semantic. Don’t you dare use CSS classes and ids that aren’t semantic. div.error = good.  div.bigRedText = bad.
• Nearly Naked. Odds are, a designer will redo the whole look from the ground up. So don’t waste your time cluttering it up with stuff I am just going to tear out anyway. If you want to have a default style, fine, but at least write your CSS so that I can easily take it out (i.e. Don’t nest your @imports 3 levels deep)

Power End Users

But what about those bloggers who are super confident navigating the admin area, but have no desire to fire up Dreamweaver and write some code?

• Solid Design. A power user wants something professional looking, something they can use out of the box. So it has to look good — in most browsers (you can skip IE5).
• Easily Customizable. Power users want to be able to add their logo, dictate their navigation structure, and more. The Admin area should have a panel that allows me to do that: upload a logo, customize a color scheme, add my analytics and advertising code. Put it all where the Power User lives, on a panel in Admin.
• Cool Stuff is automated or extremely well documented. I should be able to get a thumbnail in the featured posts area easily (for example). Either you’ve automated the whole thing, so that I just place an image in the post and it’s done, or you have clearly explained to me how to set that custom field myself.  Even better: you’ve customized the write panel so it’s obvious from the start.

Average Joe

I just want to start a blog. That’s it. Don’t confuse me.

• Fully Automated. All you cool carousels, featured article sections, and thumbnails populate themselves. And if I don’t add an image, the system has some great defaults for handling that situation.
• Choices. Let’s be honest: I’m no designer.  Give me a few color variations on the theme, but skip the admin section where I can add my own Hex code.  Because really, what are that odds that I know that #FF0000 is red? In the same way, give me a few layout options, but don’t tell me to change the @import statement in my CSS file. Package them up separately, or as child themes.
• Rock Solid Design. I don’t have a personal brand — yet.  Give me some awesome design that I can use. Maybe give me an option to upload an image to be used in the header. But remember, there is a small chance I know the difference between PNG, GIF, and JPG. So don’t count on me to get the transparency right.

My Personal Take

Themes are as much about marketing as they are about features. A clean, well-designed blog theme would do well with Power Bloggers, but probbaly flop with Designers. On the flip side, not many new bloggers will download your awesome framework. Personally, I am toying with the idea of spending some money on a “framework” like Thesis or WPRemix because it just might save me some time in development. That being said, I also have a folder full of functions.php snippets, reusable code blocks, and some templates for the WordPress Loop available to me. I’d love to roll my own framework of sorts — it will all come down to time and features available for a price.  For now, give me something like Thematic and let me do what I want.

Disclaimer: The main motivation for writing this post is a shot at a free premiumthemesclub.com membership. I’ve been thinking about these ideas for a while, but the article got written today because of an invitation at performancing.com.