Now that we are on the subject of adding options to Hybrid News theme, the topic of themes options appeared. Are there such thing as frameworks for creating a theme options page?
WordPress Theme Options Framework
Fortunately yes, there are a couple of frameworks for WordPress theme options pages. The first one I will be mentioning due to its relatively simplicity is the framework by Jeremy Clark. His WordPress Theme Options Framework features all the controls you might need and does it straight to the point. If you want to add a text bok for example, just add it to the options array.
[php]
"name" => "Text Box",
"desc" => "This is a descriptions",
"id" => $shortname."_text_box",
"std" => "Some Default Text",
"type" => "text"
[/php]
WordPress Theme Toolkit
The second one is a little more advanced but with an even simpler depending on how you look at it. The WordPress Theme Toolkit by Ozh features a very easy syntax to add your controls:
[php]
‘describe’ => ‘Kittens are {textarea|5|40} ## For example, cute and funny’
[/php]
Where the first word is the variable, then the label of the 5 rows and 40 cols textarea, and a small description below.
Tweaking existing themes
If you’re looking for a free theme to learn its backend and extend its options, you could start with the excellent Thematic or Carrington frameworks, or the free magazine styled Arras Theme, which is not strictly a framework (although you could use it as one) but features an admin backend with an enourmous amount of options.
Further reading
There are some tutorials to create an options page like:
Create an options page for your WordPress theme
Create an advanced options page in WordPress
How to create a theme options page for your WordPress theme
These tutorials cover the process of creating something close to an admin framework instead of just placing controls in the options page.
Nice post. It’s funny, I was wondering about this just yesterday. I was wondering if Thematic included some sort of frameworking for its options, too. But apparently not…
Sacha, hacking Thematic to extend its options page is not impossible, just like it’s possible to extend Hybrid News theme options page. Maybe I can write a tutorial about extending Thematic options page.
Really great post here dude! I love WordPress and it has some great expandability. Options are endless, and this post is just the tip of the iceberg. Keep up the great posts
Hi ITW, thanks for the kind words 🙂
So far WordPress seems capable to do almost anything. What I really love about WP is how small it is. I think that is what opens posibilities so much. Just like an small programming language like C has endless posibilities. Would it be too much to call WP the C language of CMSs? 🙂
hello .your site is wonderful. You can share this interface to me? please …….i very need ……..
Nice post. I haven’t used the Theme Toolkit. It looks cool.