A New Addiction

Since shipping off HalfTon 1.0 to the twins over the weekend, I’ve spent the last few days getting even deeper into the intricacies that are WordPress Theming.  I think it’s safe to say at this point that I’m addicted.

Since Saturday, I’ve done quite a bit of work to the theme for their site.  It’s enough to me that I’ll wind up actually increasing version numbers. =)

I’ll provide a laundry list of changes:

  • Internalized most of the Java to use the WP-packaged binaries (you mean I don’t need to include over 50k of scripts?! No wai!)
  • Re-formatted the post comments area
  • Created an additional admin area to include “regular” post data that they generate – Restaurant Info, post thumbnail, etc.
  • Created a theme options page where they can change the variables for the links.

Those last two items are huge.  As I’ve been discovering, the theme options are what really makes a theme stand out, especially in the “premium” category, where it’s about the only way to distinguish yourself against the competition.   There are some really amazing theme option pages out there.  And some others that truly suck.

All of this work has led me to want to start in on another theme – but right now, I’m kind of lacking in the “graphical inspiration” category.  I suppose that’s what I get for spending too much time on the code aspects of my reading and not the design aspect.  =/

BTW, if you see any random theme changes around here, don’t despair.  I’m just looking through the various themes to get an idea of popular theme options.  I’ll be back to the regular BlackPress theme here soon.