mutiny of identity
Jon Gruber has an insightful post on default blog templates, and how they can undermine the branding work that goes on on blogs. He and Joe Trotter complain that default templates often look too standard, making it difficult to convey a sense of uniqueness. Gruber raises some important points disentangling the design of software like WordPress and Movable Type for the design of the presentation (i.e. the template.)
I’d add two things to this conversation comparing WordPress and Movable Type. First, WordPress’ templates (or “themes”) are very difficult to edit. Before someone jumps on me and insults my skills, I mean that the templates require too much literacy and investment for your average blogger, someone who’s made a Web page and may be wrapping her head around CSS. WordPress is very modular, so users need to hack up multiple PHP files, plus a stylesheet to make a substantial change. I haven’t used Movable Type in over a year, but the platform had relatively straightforward template files, and platform-specific tags, which didn’t require the user to parse PHP.
Secondly, the themes available for WordPress almost always use brittle CSS. They’re designed by people who want pixel-control over presentation, they often have weird leading and spacing issues. These themes look great “out of the box,” but if a user tries to tweak the typography or images, she often winds up dealing with broken presentation that requires more mucking about with CSS.
It’s no wonder so many WordPress blogs look like Kubrick or Hemingway with the colors and banner images changed. The templates are just too hard to edit. I’ve looked for a loose “wireframe” theme for WordPress to no avail. When I started banging on this theme, I thought I would create a theme, I could publish as a resource for other bloggers who want to get to know WordPress’ theme structure and be more creative with the platform, but I still haven’t found the time. I’m surprised I’ve found the time to write this.
You’re right. MT is easier to edit than WP. My own WP theme is a very hacked-up version of K2, and it does weird things if I put certain kinds of markup in my posts, because my hacks conflict with the stock CSS in that theme in ways I haven’t pinned down.
There is a wireframe-type theme called “sandbox.”
So that’s a solution. Unfortunately, some of the coolest WP themes aren’t just altering the appearance but the behavior of WP, through custom functions and AJAX trickery (as K2 does). Because of the way that themes extend WP’s base functionality, it would be possible (and, dare I say, desirable) for a theme to offer simplified point-and-shoot interface to customize a page’s structure, palette, and typography, while offering some of those whizbang features.
[…] have to use Google’s Blog Search to find some other responses worth noting. Among them was Christ McDonnell’s comment: [Wordpress] templates require too much literacy and investment for your average […]