Chapter 7: Using Theme Frameworks to Simplify Customization
In This Chapter
Getting familiar with theme frameworks
Exploring popular theme frameworks
Recognizing common framework features
As theme development for WordPress became a more complex task, theme designers began to realize that they were using the same snippet of code and functions repeatedly to accomplish the same tasks in every theme they built. When it came time for them to upgrade their theme (for example, when WordPress released a new version with new features), they found themselves updating the same functions and adding the same features over and over to several themes they had developed. This is how theme frameworks were born. Essentially, a theme framework is a single theme that is a foundation for other themes to be built from.
Chapter 5 of this minibook discusses child themes, including how to build them. With theme frameworks, the parent theme (the framework) contains all the WordPress functions and template tags, and you can build child themes on top of them. The nice thing about this setup is that the original theme developer has to update only one theme, the framework, to provide upgrades to all of his ...
