| Author | Posts |
|---|---|
| Author | Posts |
| January 9, 2012 at 10:07 pm #34338 | |
 Chris Aprea | Wanted to see how people are implementing theme setting/option pages these days. Do you write these pages from scratch? Do you use a framework / PHP class? If so which one? What are the advantages / disadvantages. Discuss! |
| January 10, 2012 at 11:10 pm #34457 | |
 Ryan Imel | I can’t say I’m implementing them into custom themes or even themes for clients (anymore), but my favorite implementation of theme options/settings right now is the Options Framework. It just seems like the right direction to go, and I tend to prefer the themes that use it I think. |
| January 10, 2012 at 11:30 pm #34459 | |
 blogjunkie | +1 for Options Framework. Easy to implement and lots of features including image uploads. Much easier and faster than coding it by hand. |
| January 11, 2012 at 12:20 am #34463 | |
| Chris Aprea | How do you guys feels about it being a plugin? For me it kind of makes more sense for the theme options to be included with the theme itself. That way you’re not telling users to “download the Options Framework plugin to configure this theme’s settings”. I know there’s an option to include it directly within the theme but I believe that wasn’t the authors original intention and don’t know how well supported that method is. |
| January 11, 2012 at 12:29 am #34466 | |
| Ryan Imel | I think making the options framework into a plugin is the part that I like the most. There are certainly bound to be settings which are specific to a theme, and I get that, but a number of settings (logos, social links) can also be taken with you from theme to theme.
I don’t think themes should do that either. Instead (and I know I’ve seen a couple of themes recently that have been able to pull this off) I think a button should be shown to the user that says “Enable Options Framework” that will just download and activate the plugin when clicked. Or something like that. |
| January 11, 2012 at 12:40 am #34470 | |
| Chris Aprea | Cool! Thanks for the insight Ryan, a possible solution to make the process a little smoother might be to pair it up with the TGM Plugin Activation class. |
| January 11, 2012 at 12:42 am #34471 | |
| Ryan Imel | Happy to, that’s a great class. One of the most exciting techniques I’ve seen in the last few months is the clever use of activating plugins to pull in additional features. I look forward to seeing more folks implementing stuff like that. |
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