I am not sure I am following you… anonymous. Are you saying that you would like to see a template system such as MT and php-nuke and post-nuke have?
That is something that has been considered in the past, and might be implemented at some time, but I for one do not want that kind of function built in. I guess you are having problems distinguishing form from function. The CSS has nothing to do with the way that your blog operates from a programming standpoint. If you omitted a CSS sheet all together your blog would still function just like everyone elses, it would just be super ugly.
And technically you don’t have to change the CSS references in your index.php file. Some of us do, since we are maintaining the site and might find a more or less descriptive syntax system more to our liking. You could simply open up your wp-layout.css file and change the CSS but keep the div and span names the same. That way you don’t change the index file at all, just the formatting in the CSS file.
It is the same theory behind alternate stylesheets that some sites use, if you want to say have a grey, blue and red theme and allow the user to select which one, you create 3 CSS files that use the same div syntax but style the page according to the color you want. Then you just plop a rel to them in your head and give the user a switching mechanism and BAM! You have alternate stylesheets.
If you would like more info on how to do this, register with the forum, and one of us would be glad to write up a tutorial for you.
Hope this helps.
Chris
Thanks so-gal!
I can understand looking for examples of modifying the CSS, and coming upon people who have heavily modified their index.php — that might be a side-effect of too many of us hackers lurking around. 😉
At the same time, it’s just CSS. If you can edit CSS at all, if you can read some articles and learn it (which is all I did, after all), you CAN just start to play around with the CSS file and not touch the PHP at all.
I’m not an average WP user — I’m a programmer by trade, and did a stint working in PHP last year working on a multimedia-software remote-controlling web interface project, that served up customized html interfaces based on the requesting browser (so it’d do something packed in properly for say a palmpilot, versus full graphics and layout capable desktops…). Thus, modifying not only index.php, but functions throughout WP, is just something I do. If it’s broke, I fix it. If it doesn’t work the way I need it to, I modify it.
The average user shouldn’t, and doesn’t, need to do that. I’ve been a proponent of making sure there is more-than-adequate (i.e., ‘extra’) markup in index.php, and possibly ‘non-coder admin tools’, to make it easier for the average blogger to pick up and use WP. But, that’s up to the core WP group.
=d
@NTUgly
RE: Tutorial
Add it to the wiki, please. Thanks! 🙂
Craig.
