Chapter 7: Using Theme Frameworks to Simplify Customization
- Getting familiar with theme frameworks
- Exploring popular theme frameworks
- Recognizing common framework features
As theme development for WordPress became a more complex task, theme designers began to realize that they were using the same snippet of code and functions repeatedly to accomplish the same tasks in every theme they built. When it came time for them to upgrade their theme (for example, when WordPress released a new version with new features), they found themselves updating the same functions, adding the same features over and over to several themes they had developed. This is how theme frameworks were born. Essentially, a theme framework is a single theme that is a foundation for other themes to be built from.
In Chapter 5 of this minibook, we discuss child themes, including how to build them. With theme frameworks, the parent theme (the framework) contains all the WordPress functions and template tags, and you can build child themes on top of them. The nice thing about this setup is that the original theme developer has to update only one theme, the framework, to provide upgrades to all their theme offerings (the child themes).
Frameworks come with the tools developers can use to make a custom theme with great efficiency. Using a framework that provides these tools is much faster than building your own tools every time you want to modify a standard theme.
In this chapter, we explore some of the popular theme frameworks and the tools these frameworks contain that make them appealing to developers who want to create a custom theme.