Designing themes for the marketplace
Permalink
Hi all,
I'm working on a few themes for the market place. I've been following the updated instructions and all is good. The templates install/function properly as they should.
My question is regarding styling specific areas for general templates. If you take a look at the attached example screen shot, notice on the right there is 2 separate boxes. I'm just trying to get my head around making styles like this available on a generic template.
E.g. Right now if I want to put in a page list as one box, and then a generic content block as another separate box, I can't the blocks get grouped as one big box and fudges the styles.
My thoughts are that an easy way to make this work would be to create custom templates and apply it to whatever block you place in the right side bar area. This would create the appropriate markup for the styling. But for a generic template, not knowing specific requirements of the user, how do we enable this kind of style to work for everyone?
Is it just a case of create styles for each of the available blocks so that it formats correctly? How do we determine which blocks will be used, or deal with future additions?
Or is this something that could be solved using page type?
Hmm I hope I've explained that clearly. And sorry if I've totally overcomplicated this! Any help would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Josh
I'm working on a few themes for the market place. I've been following the updated instructions and all is good. The templates install/function properly as they should.
My question is regarding styling specific areas for general templates. If you take a look at the attached example screen shot, notice on the right there is 2 separate boxes. I'm just trying to get my head around making styles like this available on a generic template.
E.g. Right now if I want to put in a page list as one box, and then a generic content block as another separate box, I can't the blocks get grouped as one big box and fudges the styles.
My thoughts are that an easy way to make this work would be to create custom templates and apply it to whatever block you place in the right side bar area. This would create the appropriate markup for the styling. But for a generic template, not knowing specific requirements of the user, how do we enable this kind of style to work for everyone?
Is it just a case of create styles for each of the available blocks so that it formats correctly? How do we determine which blocks will be used, or deal with future additions?
Or is this something that could be solved using page type?
Hmm I hope I've explained that clearly. And sorry if I've totally overcomplicated this! Any help would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Josh
Thanks, good ideas there. I will explore this further.
I think packaging would probably help out a bunch. Taking a look at wordpress themes, they seem to include a whole bunch of "area" specific files that wrangle the generic output into something workable and then get called into the page. Probably not the best example, but those designs would face similar challenges. If the install process for packaged themes remains as easy as it is for current themes then that may be an ideal solution.
With conrete5 being so awesomely flexible, I guess you can't really make one theme to rule them all. People will always add on their own blocks etc, and I guess if they are already doing this they will prob be able to change the theme to match.
As long as the theme functions according to some outlined specs, it's then up to the designer chose how much further they take the theme. And then decide when a free theme becomes a paid theme. You're looking at different markets I think and the extra effort is prob worth a few $$.
Just on a side note, I was up to 4am on Sunday morning (aussie time) working on a number of them! I'm just finding them really fun to do... arrghh that sounds so geeky!!
I think packaging would probably help out a bunch. Taking a look at wordpress themes, they seem to include a whole bunch of "area" specific files that wrangle the generic output into something workable and then get called into the page. Probably not the best example, but those designs would face similar challenges. If the install process for packaged themes remains as easy as it is for current themes then that may be an ideal solution.
With conrete5 being so awesomely flexible, I guess you can't really make one theme to rule them all. People will always add on their own blocks etc, and I guess if they are already doing this they will prob be able to change the theme to match.
As long as the theme functions according to some outlined specs, it's then up to the designer chose how much further they take the theme. And then decide when a free theme becomes a paid theme. You're looking at different markets I think and the extra effort is prob worth a few $$.
Just on a side note, I was up to 4am on Sunday morning (aussie time) working on a number of them! I'm just finding them really fun to do... arrghh that sounds so geeky!!
1) Make unique block areas for each part, put the chrome in the template. This probably makes sense and you can even do a hook to check if there are 0 blocks in area don't display it..
2) make a custom template that contains the chrome. you're right, it's confusing tho - do you only do it for the content block.. probably.. is it easy for the average site owner to pick a custom template - not as much as it should be today.... at least we'll be distributing templates as packages now so if you want to go the route of adding custom templates you can.. same with additional page types..
hope that helps, i'm eager to figure out what the best path is on this one as it feels like one of those sticky real world - no perfect solution - type problems...