Weblog Tools Collection is winding up for another WordPress plugin competition, and I don’t mind admitting that I am slightly excited.

The moment I read the post I started thinking about what I could do and I have a few ideas which, for obvious reasons, will need to remain under wraps.

Before I get too carried away with my grand, and yet probably impractical, plans I thought I would see if anyone who isn’t going to enter wants to throw some ideas out there for anyone who is going to enter. SO, how about it, what would you like to see in a plugin that isn’t already out there?

Dan Philbin has written a great post over at WP-Candy titled 30+ Things That Should Be Changed For WordPress 2.6. Some I agree with and others I don’t, so here is my list of things I don’t want to see in WordPress 2.6.

Customisable Colour Themes / Login

This point isn’t really about colour themes, but customisation in general. I don’t have a problem with customisation itself, just with the idea of adding unecessary default code to the admin pages.

There are already plugins, like the excellent Baltic Amber plugin that I am using, that let you change the admin colours and I am sure there must be one that alters the login screen. I don’t feel that a high enough percentage of WordPress users need to change their colours or their login screen for it to be worth adding extra code, and extra menus in the admin space.

Having said that, I wouldn’t object to a folder in wp-content where an alternative, override, stylesheet could be uploaded, in a similar way to themes.

More AJAX

I don’t really like AJAX that much. I would much prefer to have a page refresh and for an action to work properly than to wait for something to happen, if is going to happen; it doesn’t always. I know I shouldn’t have to wait, AJAX done well will keep the user updated with the process, but how often is AJAX done well?

AJAX should be used where there is genuine need, or advantage, and I just don’t see either in the WordPress admin theme.

On the user side there are perhaps some advantages. The excellent AJAX edit comments plugin is very good, and worthwhile, but AJAX commenting in general just feels like a gimmick to me.

What I want is time spent on getting good code right. Pretty / cool! can wait.

Integrate admin and live areas

I think separation between the admin area and the live site is a very good thing. I think it is useful to have two distinct modes of use, better for theme authors who shouldn’t have to think about admin content and how it will affect their theme, and I think it is better for security to have a clear divide.

In my eyes it would be far better to alter the admin side so that it isn’t necessary to swap; for example, being able to respond to comments in the admin screen, and better comment sorting options.

I know some people like to make their blog easier for their own use, but I think this is another case where one good plugin can give those people what they want without adding more code to the core.

Integrate with Feedburner

Feedburner is not the only game in town. A simple text box to overide the feed location will do fine. Don’t forget category specific feeds and comment feeds though.

Give in to temptation

So far I think the developers have done a great job of resisting functionailty that is beter dealt with by plugins. I imagine this is becoming more and more difficult with more and more users coming on board.

The decision to leave something out seems as important as adding in something new. If everyone got the killer feature they wanted then WordPress would not be the platform we know and love today. I dare say it would start to suck pretty quickly.

So what about you? I bet everyone can think of a lot of things they want to see in WordPress, what do you want to see not in WordPress?

Do we really yet another post asking our opinion about the features a theme should contain? Yes we do; that is why I am writing it. I want to know what is the simplest feature you would like any theme to contain?

I need to clarify this question becuase I am getting at something here.

There have been some great posts in the past that ask what the future of themes is, what the default theme should contain, what the ideal feature set should be, and what the minimum feature set should be. Generally these end up being either pie-in-the-sky or get-basics-right responses; sometimes even both.

That’s not what I want, so let me put it more clearly:

You have just installed a theme (premium or free, doesn’t matter) and you think it is really good. You have no complaints; in fact it does everything you need it to do. But you know what? it would have been so simple to just add x. That would be have been a nice touch.

That’s what I want. What is x?

Having now tried out a few of the iThemes premium themes I am noticing a trend develop in the themes. As you might expect there is consistency in the way the themes work and in the way they can be modified and so I have decided to review the remaining themes in just one post.

Developing themes to a consistent feature set is a great idea. It means that when ideas are put forward for inclusion it is easier for all the themes to be updated.

A number of the themes feature home page images that need to be manually replaced by uploaded an image to the server. I have no problem with this, but the consistent feature set means that should they decide to automate this in some way, or if you have bought more than one theme and want to update them yourself, the task will be that much easier.

The themes I am trying out in this post are the Biz Card Theme, Corporate Theme, Deep Order Theme and the Grunge Theme. As with the other themes it isn’t the appearance that interests me, but the features.

All of the themes features except the Biz Card theme include an image uploader which allows you to upload and crop to size a replacement for the themes header image. This is a nice addition but I’m not sure if it is entirely necessary.

With other images the theme uses, such as the featured image I mentioned above, you are expected to replace the image in the theme folder. As I’ve said, I don’t see this as a problem; however, the header images usually require a little work to make it fit the theme and I wonder what triggered the idea that a straight-out-of-photoshop (or GIMP) image would require cropping as part of the upload process.

The Corporate and Grunge themes both include a Photoshop file which makes altering the header a fairly straightforward solution. The Font used for the Grunge theme header itself is readily available for free download so you shouldn’t have any problems altering it to your own title.

The Biz Card theme doesn’t have a header image as such, so the uploader is not necessary. Instead it includes a series of 5 images, which you would need to replace with your own, which change at each page load.

The Biz Card and Grunge Themes both have an admin page for your contact information so you can update this without editing any HTML directly.

One of the mistakes I made with another iThemes theme was to start hacking before looking at the available page templates. Having realised their power, I think page templates are one of the best and easiest ways of offering additional functionality within a theme. With the exception of the Deep Order theme these templates all come with a blog index page template which can be used to add your blog index, showing excerpts from the last five posts, to the main menu. The Corporate theme also includes a page template to replace the home page, which by default features blog posts, with a page, while keeping the same sidebar content.

Overall I think these themes are well put together, easy to change, and a nice starting point. There are lots of things that I would change if they were my themes, but of course that would defeat the purpose of a ready made theme. The point is to make it simple enough to be a starting point for whatever you want to use them for, and I think they are great for this.

Are they worth the money? Well that is something for you to decide yourself, but the cost of even the most expensive themes is only a few hours wages for a good designer, so buying one of these themes is likely to compare favourably with the time it would take to build your own from scratch.

If your looking for a theme that you can make your own without a great deal of modification, then these fit the bill. There are also video tutorials and support forums that could prove invaluable if your not that familiar with WordPress.

You can find out more about the iThemes Premium WordPress Themes at iThemes.com

I want to share with you one of the features that I included in the WordPress theme that I released yesterday, or at least my thinking behind it, because it is something that I thought about for a while before implementing. The features is tracking the user on certain pages to determine the type of links to offer.

When you include a previous, or next, post link in a template file you have the option of limiting the link to posts in the same category, and of limiting those categories to ensure that some are excluded from that.

The problem I have found with my themes is that hard coding this into the theme meant I was either limiting posts to categories when I didn’t want to, or I wasn’t limiting posts when I thought the user would probably expect it.

So, the user might select a category list and get an archive page. From that page they select a single post to view. If the user then chooses a newer or older post do they expect it to be restricted, or not? I thought so.

My solution was to offer a choice, but only under certain circumstances.

When a user visits a category page, the ID of that category is saved into a session variable. If they next visit a single page that is in that category, the category is retained; otherwise it is discarded.

If a user is viewing a single page and their session variable contains a category ID they are presented with a choice. Select a older or newer post from that category, or select an older or newer post from the blog as a whole.

If they do not have the session variable then they do not get the choice, they are automatically taken to the newer, or older, post from the blog as a whole.

I think this is a good way of meeting the users needs unobtrusively.

Back in February I started a series of posts based around designing my first, intended for release, wordPress Theme. These posts explored the process I went through and culminated with a semi-complete design. I now have a version of that theme available for download.

Since those posts a number of things have happened to delay the theme. I have amended a few plugins, been ill, been away, and failed to find inspiration. I have also redesigned parts of the theme and found areas where things just didn’t work as intended.

So does that mean the theme is complete? Well not really. There are still things that I am not happy with, but I have decided to offer it up now to save me tinkering with it forever. There are some compatibility problems with IE6 that I intend to solve with Javascript. For now though just be aware that they exist.

You can get more details on the Fun with Minimalism Wordpress Theme page as well as my first ever tutorial videos that explain how some of the features work. There is a fair bit of processing involved in some of the aspects so I am interested to hear your opinions.

I am using the theme on my other blog already. You can check out http://www.arickmann.co.uk for a live demo. Just be aware that the photography category switches to the iThemes Photo Gallery Theme.