1. if you want to visually separate the ‘blockquote’, ‘code’, ‘cite’ etc, then you need to provide it in the style.css
if you want to let the browser do whatever it does by default for these tags, then leave it.
2. you don’t need to comment every part of the style.css. most users will learn it by intuition.
but if you name the #sidebar div to be something like #myowndivthaticanputanyname, then you need to say it means the sidebar.
3. A theme is complete as long as it has ‘index.php’, ‘style.css’. but we do want to have a slightly different look, when the post is viewed in archives or categories or single page or search results.
in that case you need other files.
if you are going to provide more than just index.php, then it makes sense to keep the common parts like, header, sidebar and footer in separate files.
if you do not provide a comments.php, WP will take it from the default theme’s folder., but again if you want the comments to look different, then you need to provide your own comments.php within the theme folder.
4. functions.php is not needed if you do not want to provide any custom functions or a theme options page.
Hope that makes sense.
let me know if you need any clarifications.
Thanks
Sadish
True – I do know all of this. But what I want to know is not what *I* want, but what is most commonly requested by people who use themes. I just wanted to put out a feeler to see what it is that makes a theme “good” and what to add to my next theme to make it better than the last one I did.
The last one I did actually does pretty well – I’ve been *very* surprised by the amount of downloads it’s gotten (if you sort the theme viewer by most popular downloads, mine is on the first page of results) – but I want to improve upon it – so I was hoping that I could get some responses from what others want (not what *I* want 🙂 ).
I think the happy end users (who download the themes and never think about how they work) – don’t have a clue what they want 🙂
So, you’ll get answers here only from users who also did built themes…
I suppose you have a point there, moshu. 😉 I guess I should be happy that my inital try was so successful – I must’ve done something right.
I’m just overly-competitive with myself. 😉
OH. you already know what I said. 🙂 good.
let me tell you from a user’s point of view.
I did not download your theme to test it out, but I looked at the ‘Test Run’ from themes.wordpress.net for the Orange Crush theme.
1. Instead of saying blogname.com and linking to blogname.com, use bloginfo(‘name’) and bloginfo(‘url’) so that any theme user will get their own name and link at the header.
thats what “people” would want.
2. Instead of saying “short blog description here, perhaps a tagline of some sort.”, use bloginfo(‘description’)
3. Allow the user to decide whether comments have to be in a pop up window or on the main page.
I, as a user,will want it on the main window.
4. The title tag is empty. you may have to get that fixed too.
Hope that helps you Improve.
Thanks
Sadish
Also needed to show the list of pages.
Your theme did not have it listed anywhere…
so you want the “people” to add the code to the sidebar by themselves. ?
Also add a footer link to your own website, so you can see how many people use the theme.
if your link is in the footer, then you can go to http://technorati.com/search/anekostudios.com and it will list all the people who use the theme.
Cool sadish – thanks!
Can I get a little clarification, though?
>>3. Allow the user to decide whether comments have to be in a pop up window or on the main page.<<
This, I did do – at least I think I did. From what I’ve understood about Worpdress: if you have the “comments-popup.php” file, along with the “comments.php” file, WordPress will use the popup file first. It’s my understanding that if you delete the popup file, then WordPress will instantly revert to the “comments on the page” by default. I coded the theme thinking this way – so all the end user has to do when using the theme, if they don’t want the popup, is to just delete the popup file. Am I wrong in this line of thinking?
>>Also needed to show the list of pages.
Your theme did not have it listed anywhere…<<
I’m not sure what you mean by this? I know in the download, right in the “readme” file, I have a list of every file, and what folder they should be in. If you mean a list of pages in the Theme Viewer, I didn’t see an option for that when I uploaded the theme – it only asked me color (which, the theme actually comes in three colors right now, but ornage is the default – so I only put it under “orange”), sidebars and that stuff. But there was no text-entry area where I could say what files are in there.
>>so you want the “people” to add the code to the sidebar by themselves. ?<<
I’m *really* not sure what you mean by this at all! The theme is widget-ready, but it’s also coded to allow for users who don’t want to use widgets, and has pretty much what you see in the widgetized sidebar. Other than that, I’m not sure what you mean 🙂
But thanks for the advice and comments – there’s a couple of things there I ‘hadn’t thought of before (like the footer link – never even thought of that!)
No. by ‘List of Pages’, I meant Pages created within wordpress using ‘Write Page’.
I am talking about the call to wp_list_pages().
It should be included in the sidebar.
Adding a footer link, will actually help you to see all the sites that use your theme and how many different ways people customize your theme.
You should watch this list in the technorati and appreciate someone who has done some good customizations to your theme.
Remember “Number of Downloads” is not always the right thing to measure.
Otherwise I am glad that you are learning something.
Thanks
Sadish
