I released a baseline theme and PSD set called Gravy back in August and am happy sales have exceeded expectations. Just as important, user feedback has shown that the theme speeds up development time and can be used for diverse projects.
New Features
In v1.2 released last month, I included a handful of new features I think are useful:
- Numeric pagination. I get a little impatient clicking “Next” or “Previous” when sorting through an archive trying to revisit a page. I like the option of skipping ahead. And even though you can change the verbiage, the naming convention of “Next” and “Previous” on most blogs always feels confusing to me. Overall, I prefer numeric (”Digg-style“) pagination. Not a radical change, but nice to have.
- Custom Blog page template. If you use WordPress for purposes outside of blogging, your homepage might contain static content while the blog lives on an interior page. Obviously, Settings->Reading lets you assign other templates to your homepage, but with this method, a separate homepage template isn’t necessary, you just use index.php.
- Custom full-width page template. Again, using Gravy for non-blogs, you may have pages that simply don’t need sidebars while others do. This template lets content expand the full width of the page.
- HTML5 preparation. Ok, this one is a bit… aspirational. As excited as I am about the improvements to semantic markup that will come with HTML5, especially tags perfectly suited for blogs (<article>, <aside>, <time>), including the necessary shim for IE8 to style certain elements just felt messy. And premature. So looking forward to the future, Gravy’s doctype has changed and it validates, but the good stuff will have to wait.
Questions & Suggestions
I’m definitely trying to be careful about which tweaks I add to the theme since the whole point is to provide just enough vital stuff to get a project started. The theme should ideally do as much as possible with the least code.
I’m biased toward my own needs obviously, but my ears are always open regarding how others might use it. Let me know what you think:
- What snippets do you include with every theme you build which are absent from Gravy?
- Outside of those, what features would you like to see in Gravy?
- What features currently in Gravy do you think are unnecessary?
- Is there common sidebar content you’d like to see included as a custom widget? An example might be “More from this Category” which is great for SEO and making a page stickier.
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8:34 am
Add a footer widget with 3 or 4 columns please.
1:22 am
This will be added to the next version.
5:39 pm
I recently looked over Grazy and I’m thinking about purchasing it. I do have my own set of files that I use as a start for projects, but this looks like it may be of use too.
Just wondering, do you start off with a global reset?
3:17 am
A better way to style the comments!!. I tried hard to style it like you have done it above in this page and, some other popular sytles but couldn’t. In short, comments needs to be more flexible.
Also if I’ve a custom homepage set, I would need a separate blog page where I wish to show full posts and for other archives, I wish to show excerpts only. In your loop.php, theres no such provision. Overall, a very thoughtful theme and I wish matt mullenweg hire you to re-do the default wp theme :D
1:24 am
Thanks for the input. Can you tell me what you mean about styling the comments? They are deliberately styled pretty generically with minimal code. Is there something in particular that’s preventing specific styling?
Regarding a blog page with full posts, in the last version I actually included a custom page template that does exactly that.
8:11 am
didn’t knew about the custom page template, will grab it now.
Formatting comments in wordpress has become tough. Ofcourse you’ve designed the comments beautifully in the gravy but I’d love the flexibility. For example, if I wish to make the comments look like on this page, I can’t. ( gravatar on left and username, content on right)
It’d be great to have all the elements codes separate so we can place it however we want. e.g.
- actual comment content
- author name
- gravatar
- reply button
that way, I can place any element anywhere in the comment box.
12:17 am
Oh I realized I could check it myself.
What I would suggest and love to see is a more thorough reset that simply the margin and padding reset to 0.
1:26 am
I’ve considered it, while wanting to keep the code minimal. To be honest, I’ve built nearly every site for a couple years with the * {} reset and not ran into a problem in any browser. But if it’s obvious that’s causing problems, I’ll definitely consider the alternatives.
7:07 am
I haven’t actually checked it out as yet, the request was more because I’ve been using it for a few years now and feel comfortable with it. I’ll be picked up Gravy soon and I’ll let you know if it actually causes any issues.
12:48 pm
Darren,
I appreciate the link. I do not however use that “Dig Style Pagination” plugin anymore, the one mentioned in the post you linked to.
I now use WP-Paginate – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-paginate/
I find that WP-Paginate is easier to use. Specially if you have to change the css to match your theme.
Thanks again for the mention. Look forward to return a favor.
On a different subject…… Have you ever developed themes for real estate agents? If so I would love to showcase them on my blog.
7:08 pm
Hi Vlad. For better or worse, I haven’t done any real estate sites in a pretty long time.
5:27 pm
I would love to see a custom homepage template. Another good feature would be to separate out the structure css like the nav and post is done with a few options on column structure etc..
7:11 pm
Can you elaborate about a custom homepage template? Right now, index.php features a simple blog layout. I hesitate to include anything that’s not totally generic and that you wouldn’t use with each and every site. Same goes for column structure – there is vast potential for variation. No two people would probably lay out columns the same.
1:09 pm
I am not sure if I like it so much that the (or any theme, for that matter) theme takes control about SEO features like the title and description tags.
I would prefer to have this as an option rather, then hard coded in the functions.php file, as it is now.
Having said that, I have used Gravy for my last two projects and love it: great value for the money!
1:56 pm
Hey Darren,
I assume you plan on updating the theme for Wordpress 3? Do you have a timetable for that? Thanks!