The naming for the Themes pages was discussed in the discussion page for the Themes ( Talk:Themes ). It was agreed upon that the end-user page would be "themes" and the developer page would be "theme development" to keep things simple. Now someone may come along and rename "using themes" to "wordpress themes" or "using wordpress themes"..

Please do not move pages without first discussing whether to move them or not, else we will have a proliferation of redirects, each user creating new pages with new titles, according to their subjective preference.

Note: When moving pages, the talk pages have to be moved too. Talk:Themes still exists, so that history is lost, or at least not easily available to someone visiting "Using Themes".

Carthik 19:44, 4 Jan 2005 (GMT)

DUPLICATION OF EFFORT: There is a growing list of themes showing up on the Answers-Layout page and there is also a list of themes here. It seems to me that there should be a separate page for these and they will be maintained from there. Discuss on the docs mailing list, ASAP, please. DO NOT ADD ANY MORE THEMES TO THE LIST UNTIL THIS IS RESOLVED, PLEASE.

--NuclearMoose 05:29, 8 Jan 2005 (GMT)

Carthik, the use of the loud "1.5 Gamma Only" in the titles was in response to the insanely growing number of problems in the support forums due to v1.2.2 users attempting to install v1.5 themes which they "found on Codex". Could we please add that back? I don't want to step on any toes by doing it myself. --MacManX

To chime in: Warnings may be necessary, but I'd rather them left out of the Titles. It makes the Table of Contents so big the introduction is hard to read. How about big, in red, and at the top of the page/under the appropriate section titles. --MDAWaffe 20:01, 7 Feb 2005 (GMT)

MDAWaffe, I am not sure that putting that back in this article, which is about using Themes would help reduce the number of people who attempt to use it with 1.2.2 . Putting that in the titles is not the best way. I would not ming red letters warning the visitors that these work only for 1.5-gamma, as opposed to having that in titles all over the article. The headers (section titles) are also link anchors, which make it important to not change them to be ridiculously long. A warning before the list of themes would be more appropriate, don't you think?

Carthik 20:56, 7 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Carthik, I don't know what kind of warnings are or aren't effective. Probably no warning can be written that will deter everyone from trying something that won't work. I've certainly disregarded my fair share of warnings in the past. Warnings in Titles is bad, I agree (the anchors point is a good one). Above the list of themes seems appropriate to me as well. But I do like red. People tend to skim black. --MDAWaffe 21:25, 7 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Hi, I was just saying that people probably just read the first section, and skim through to the list of themes, So a couple of warnings, one in the Intro and one at the head of the list should be as goog as any :) I added the warnings now.

Carthik 21:37, 7 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Thanks Carthik, that's perfect! --MacManX

Let's Finalize This Page

I went through and tightened up a few of the phrases and the overall look. But we really need to clean this up thoroughly.

1. Whoever is the decision-maker - make the decision to only include the clearing house information on various Themes and either move this list of themes to another page or just delete them and let everyone know that they should post their list in the clearing house resources.
2. Can we move "upgrading from 1.2 to 1.5" on themes to another page? Does it really belong here? Should it go on the general [Upgrading] page?

Lorelle 01:15, 18 Feb 2005 (GMT)

I like the new additions and changes, but I'm still asking if there is another way of managing the soon to be growing list of themes? Ideas?

Lorelle 03:10, 21 Feb 2005 (GMT)

I think we should leave it as it is. I mean, yes it will be a big list, but we'll be primarily linking to the anchors anyways. Or, if we do link to it, we'll need an admin to redirect the list's anchor to the new page since there a lot of forum topics linked to the anchor. -MacManX

I don't know why I feel so behind the times but I just discovered http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/category/wordpress-themes/ and the listing of themes includes a screen capture...lovely. I really think it would be a good idea to include a link here, Mac, for this site to help people "see" before they download. And the more I see people playing with themes, the more I still think the list of themes should be on its own page. It's such a BIG deal and it will only get bigger. In its own page it would be easier to bill, promote, and maintain. Just my 24.65 cents again. The list is looking awesome. What a lot of work! Thanks. Lorelle 04:30, 26 Feb 2005 (GMT)

License prompt

Macmanx, I rolled the page back since I think the reminder is okay to have in there. It does not say that the license "has" to be specified. It is not a requirement, merely a prompt for the authors who add their plugins to mention their license.

Carthik 20:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I see your point. Heh, but did you have to rollback to before all of this morning's additions? I restored it and left the copyedit in. Thanks for clearing things up though. ^_^ -MacManX

I am sorry for the huge rollback. Blame it on multi-tasking. Thanks for putting in the work to correct my mistake. I will watch my step ;)

Carthik 20:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Page is getting loooooong

This page should be flagged for Wiki Day work. I think the list of themes can probably stand on its own. Any other comments or suggestions are most welcome. NuclearMoose 21:10, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Me agree'um widcha! Way too long. Also, I realized that Classic and Default (kubrick) aren't listed. They need to be so people can see what they look like, too. Gots to include everyone! But PLEASE, let's set up a separate page for this if we are going to continue to maintain it on the Codex. With all the other places popping up that list this information zealously, should we even bother keeping up with it? Honestly? Lorelle 21:08, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

After I did all that work to re-organize it? Do you know how long that took? Never mind.

Better? -MacManX

MacManX - you are a star. You are brilliant. You are the answer to all of our dreams and wishes. This will be SO MUCH BETTER. I adore it and you! Thanks you! Lorelle 05:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

intro >> what is? VS what is? >> intro

I just installed wordpress (5 min ago) and started looking around the codex to understand more about the system. This themes page caught my attention. This page would have been easier for me to understand if the "What is a theme?" heading had been at the very top of the page followed by the intro which is slightly more technical.

Thanks for the suggestion. How's that? -MacManX

More on the updating Procedure

This posting shows that you can easily use the old 1.2.x style you used in the 1.5. Should we include that too? --Raddaqii 12:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Need instructions for how to have different themes for different categories

In the section entitled 'Themes vs the Styleswitcher', there is a paragraph that reads, "Themes are a whole new ball game. Let's say you write a lot about cheese and gadgets. You could now have completely different pages for each category. In the Cheese category, you could have just the useful Cheese links, a nice image of some cheese for the header and you could still have the CSS alter the page presentation in any way you wish to. When your viewer then clicks the Gadget category, the whole page changes again. The page structure could change, the links, the CSS, the images - everything. You are limited only by your imagination :)" (btw, doesn't this explanation of themes belong in the 'What is a Theme' section?)

It seems to me that this is the largest benefit of themes over templates, yet the pages on using Themes don't tell you HOW to accomplish this (having the Cheese category use a different theme, complete with cheese links only, etc and having another theme for the Gadget category). It says we're only limited by our imagination - and that would be true if there were any documentation on how to implement this functionality. I've looked all over the codex and couldn't find the instructions - am I missing something? -HowToBlog

Good points. I've moved the 'Themes vs. styleswitcher' discussion under What is a Theme?. And I assume you've looked at the documentation regarding Theme Development? That would be the best place to address the lack of documentation for this specific example.

yami 20:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. So does referring me to Theme Development mean that one must create their own theme in order for it to take advantage of this functionality? That you cannot accomplish this (dift theme for cheese vs gadgets) with any themes from the theme competition (for example) without making major modifications to the theme itself? HowToBlog 10:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Hard to say - there's nothing stopping people from distributing a theme with individual category templates, but I'm not aware of anyone who's done so. You'd have to ask on the support forums. If you find such a theme, though, would you please add it to the Theme List and include a reference to it here? -yami 16:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Sure seems a shame that this feature wasn't hyped for theme authors during Alex King's Theme Competition. Oh well. Can't wait unil I have more time to delve into making my own themes! HowToBlog 00:40, 19 May 2005 (UTC)