You’re absolutely right. Frameworks like Thesis, Genesis, and Ultimatum (among others) are essentially barebones themes that allow for modular customization with child themes and skins (in terms of Thesis, though it’s been years since I used it, so that may have changed). I use Ultimatum as a framework for features, for instance, and have child … Read more
An options framework is designed to make the creation of settings pages for plugins and themes easier. An options (or settings) page is a page in the WordPress Dashboard where the behavior of the theme or plugin can be controlled. For example, themes will often have a settings page to setup color schemes, logos, and … Read more
However, in the event that it becomes appreciated to the public – does it necessarily HAVE to be inheritable (the ability to have Child Themes derive from it)? While you can certainly make life difficult on users who try to use your Theme as a template for a Child Theme, it is all but impossible … Read more
Most frameworks are specifically designed to easily handle a large range of applications, while WordPress is quite limited when it comes to using its API to create applications like the one you mentioned. If you want to compare WordPress as a PHP framework with existing popular frameworks, think of it as one of the worst … Read more
The WP_CLI class has a runcommand method that launches a new child process to run a specified WP-CLI command. According to the docs, you can use it like this: $options = array( ‘return’ => true, // Return ‘STDOUT’; use ‘all’ for full object. ‘parse’ => ‘json’, // Parse captured STDOUT to JSON array. ‘launch’ => … Read more
Filters are for modifying the data, but actions are like bus stops where you can attach your functions to theme and they will be run when the script reaches an specific state. To use any of the above, they must be first declared somewhere. Let’s take a look at this example from the codex page … Read more
The thing about WordPress, while it doesn’t have a neat routing system in principle it does same operation. It takes the URL input and matches it to a set of query variables. The not–neat thing about it is that it uses regular expressions for these not–quite–routes and a lot of them. The total number of … Read more
The only directory a theme or a plugin should write to is the uploads directory. That is the only directory with guaranteed write access (besides the server’s temporary directory). Anything else is wrong and might not work. There is no practical difference between both, except one: the upload directory may be on another (sub) domain … Read more
The Custom Post Type Demos by toscho hold some nice basic classes, that you can use. I’d recommend taking a look at this source (as he’s a trusted author and a pretty good coder).
Of the few I’ve seen, I think that most “premium” Themes way over-complicate Theme Settings pages. I generally prefer Theme Settings pages that maintain the style/layout of the rest of the WP-Admin UI. So, these would be my rules of thumb: Incorporate meaningful settings, and not necessarily every possible setting under the sun. Organize settings … Read more