Hey cool CP people.
Just doing to testing for a new site.
Is it ok to use one of the default child themes?
Is is a great idea to use on of these?
Thanks, have a fun day.
I think it’s OK to use any of the default child themes. They are just minor customizations of the parent themes from WordPress. The important question to ask is, are the parent themes still being updated? Last time I noticed (though this has been a while), they still are.
The default child themes change referneces such as Powered by WordPress to Powered by ClassicPress and it is a good idea to use the child themes instead of the parents.
The parents will continue to receive updates for as long as updates are issued for them.
WP is keeping all their bundled themes up to date with the new features they are adding, such as block patterns. I saw a commit this week for 16 and 17 for a change made to admin bar CSS that uses a custom property. I’m not so sure it would get the right value for CP since the fallback is 0 which indicates the admin bar is not visible, not that there is no custom property. This is minor, but it shows that WP and CP are diverging.
1 Like
What is peoples guesstimate for if \ when theme twenty15\16\17 will stop working on CP?
What @joyously refers to will never be pushed to Theme TwentySeventeen when you use the one that comes with ClassicPress, see screenshot of what you get with CP, and what you would get from WP (same theme)
We do load theme version Version: 99.1-upstream1.7, whereas the latest from WP would be Version: 2.8.
As a matter of facts, you won’t have (and will never have) the Blocks related CSS (just an example) from the last TwentySeventeen from WP inside a CP Theme.
You do not need to worry to get unwanted changes from WP repo, and CP surely will not start backporting those unwanted changes either.
Thus CP and those themes will stay “compatible” (because the themes are prepared for it, as a quick look in the code shows)
2 Likes
Maybe some of the pre-twentyfifteen themes would be good to focus on as developer friendly for CP. I am using Twenty Eleven on a plugin development (also for CP) and am working on a child-theme for 2011 to make theme wider and take advantage of post formats for 2011’s “Showcase Template” [to support CPTs and page-parts].
@see: TSW Plugins and Themes – Theme for ClassicPress
Point being; some of the default WP themes will be diverging, (IMO) from 2015 and up but maybe the older ones will not. Which brings another point to the 10s of thousand themes archived that may be just fine for CP. Themes by tradesouthwest | WordPress.org over half are not updated in my repo @WP themes.
I was seriously thinking about refactoring theme twenty-sixteen as a new theme for CP. I use it on a few blogs/commerce and love the responsiveness and UI of the mobile menus. It would be a fantastic candidate for a Default ClassicPress theme.
I would like feedback on how to build a theme that will be “based on” another author’s theme—in this case wordPress being the author. I’m hoping there are no issues, if I could attribute “based-on” in the docblock comments AND not have the theme be a child theme, but, a parent theme…
Contributors would be good if you are interested. Will start Github branch this weekend and post update here; or more likely on Slack. For now just checking interests and thoughts.
In vaguely generic terms, both a GNU and MIT license, the first of which would be the license used by WP and required by any themes or plugins distributed within the wordpress.org system, allows anyone to use the code in any way they wish. I think you must credit previous authors if they are known, and need to distribute your software under the same license, but the idea of these licenses is to encourage others to build on existing work if they are inclined, not to restrict use.
1 Like
As @EliteStarServices mentions, WP is released under GPL2 (and all themes and plugins in the repos have to use same license for that reason).
You can fork the theme, make your changes to your fork and insert credits to the original theme author somewhere (some themes put that in a comment in the theme code at the very beginning of the theme CSS file under the theme info at the top).
I think you are right in saying 2016 is a very good theme. But IMHO we also would need to come up with our own yearly tradition for default themes.
I think starting the series with 2016 refactored for CP is going to send a clear message, we are taking the WP legacy with us to bring our origins with us, then the second default we develop can be totally ours to signal that we are starting to walk on our own without forgetting where we come from (we could put in that theme something that is in 2016 too so they can understand that our theme is born from the evolution of it, like a tribute)
Demo now at: ClassicSixteen – ClassicPress Demo for ClassicSixteen
Main at: https://github.com/tradesouthwest/classic-sixteen
Feel free to scour over the comments in readme and stylesheet. I’m hoping to remove a lot of 2016 “stuff” that is outdated (ie7 etc) and the backwards-compatibility scripts. I will also be adding a full-width-tmplt
Fork at will.
1 Like
Also like this attribution of the “back story” in creation. Gives some creds to why it was made from 2016 and the “clear message” you mentioned as well.
1 Like
Full width is interesting!
1 Like
https://classicpress-themes.com/cp16/2023/06/08/todo-for-this-theme/ has info about progress and questions relating to theme. If we need to setup github pull request this can be done. But my concern is: If community wants to add this as a default then I hope to get feedback on lots of things… starting with the theme slug.
classic-sixteen is the current theme slug/name but twentysixteen (WP) has no dash so do I need to rename the theme NOW before I get too far, to classicsixteen (note: the text domain is one word without dash, so maybe I DO need to make theme one word.
But I kind of like two words Classic Sixteen Votes, suggestions…
As per name, if textdomain is one world me thinks if I am not mistaken you need to rename folder and theme to the same.
However, is ClassicSixteen the name you want to go with? I kind of like it but at first I thought it was a temporary name while you were cleaning it up and refactoring it. I think it makes it evident that is a “legacy theme” in the sense it wants to give recognition to the devs who made 2016 so I would think that it is OK for the first theme in the series… but then what do we pick as our tradition for the names?
As concerns things to add/improve etc… I will give it a spin in the coming days and if it is possible to have a way to send feature requests/issues via GitHub it’s better because you will get them all in one place and it is easier for you to manage.
I noticed that you already planned the adjustments for the full page template and that is a real deal, so thanks!
Not sure how to answer this. ClassicPress TwentySixteen is the child theme name that CP currently uses. Since this is NOT a child theme (and since the name is already being used) we would NOT want to name the same. Maybe leave child theme where it is (obviously) and name Parent legacy themes a unique name AWAY from WP naming conventions.
ClassicSixteen is nice because it does not show conviction as a “core”/default theme naming convention: ClassicPress LegacyThemeName . BUT if C16 is to become a default theme then, using ClassicPress Sixteen might be a best case name.
Contenders:
- ClassicSixteen
- ClassicPress Sixteen
- Classic Sixteen
IMO #3 is best if dropping “Press” is OK for a default theme.
1 Like
Being that; ClassicPress ThemeName would be the convention for a default theme that is pure CP build and Classic ThemName would be the convention for a modified WP default theme. (make sense?)
1 Like
Yes It does. We can’t adopt WP naming standards for themes since people need to be clear that our themes don’t do blocks, and your suggestions make sense.
Then non default themes can have their name as they want.
So the only question now is ClassicPress Twentysixteen is already taken; so we would have to name “my” new theme something else.
Shall we just keep it Classic Sixteen or ClassicSixteen or ClassicPressSixteen (longer text domain… LOL)
I vote for ClassicSixteen. Although, ClassicPressSixteen might fall into default theme naming conventions better. Will wait for Viktor or others opinions before renaming. Also do we need to agree on Customizer options or will you trust me to add with discretion?