Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998. • Hacker News Board

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#11

Post by PLejeck » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:06 PM UTC

This nearly made me sick. Yes, let's use RUBY to generate our PHP. That makes loads of sense.

Then you said HAML, and I giggled.

Then you said SASS, and I started cackling.

Then you said CoffeeScript, and I nearly died of laughter.

Keep your Rubyist junk out of my (unbeloved) PHP.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#12

Post by robertp » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

This could be great for WPMU devs/admins that want to be able to have a lot of unique themes to offer their users.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#13

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#14

Post by jonknee » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

If you're going to use all the new hip tools (and take the time to learn how to use them), just go one step farther and stop using Wordpress.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#15

Post by ceol » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

I'm not a Ruby developer, so I can't comment if this makes it easier for someone who lives in both Rails and Wordpress, but as someone who has to occasionally make a custom Wordpress theme and has no experience in Rails, this looks like a lot of complexity just to put together a theme. However, I could see this being very nice for someone whose time consists mostly of Wordpress themes, and you obviously put a lot of work into it, so I don't want to write it off. It's cool you were able to make such a feature-rich Wordpress plugin.

Just to make sure: the production/live machine doesn't need the Wordless plugin, correct? Basically you use the Wordless plugin on the dev machine then just distribute the created theme directory like normal? Or am I off-base?

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#16

Post by mschwar99 » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

steffoz wrote: post #2

I would love to hear some comments from you. I think this really speeds up custom Wordpress theme creation.

I think its a good idea and will give it a try next time I need to spin up a theme.

Ignore the negativity in these comments. This is a great example of scratching your own itch and being generous enough to place it on Github. Who cares if the bulk of WordPress users won't grok it? That's no reason not to build it. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#17

Post by utkarshkukreti » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

steffoz wrote: post #2

I would love to hear some comments from you. I think this really speeds up custom Wordpress theme creation.

Does this plugin generate standalone themes or do they depend on the plugin?

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#18

Post by MattBearman » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

I feel this is solving a problem that doesn't exist.

The problem with creating a WordPress theme isn't that it's missing buzzwordy tech like HAML, SASS and CoffeeScript. The problem is that the PHP behind WordPress is hideous. Even in version 3.x

If someone were to fork WordPress and fix all the spaghetti code, then I could stop writing themes like it was 1998...

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#19

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC

LOL.

Why not just go the whole hog and run wordpress inside ruby, using tenderlove's Phuby bridge/adapter/thing.

https://github.com/tenderlove/phuby

Demo of him actually using this to run wordpress inside rack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXERy8Y2eVo

Or, you know, spend a day knocking together your own blog in rails.

I guess it could be good if you are wedded to a preexisting client base which demands wordpress, even for new projects, in which case my sincerest condolences go out to you.

To be fair, I'd imagine that those people who are raking in big $$$ doing WP themes must have something like this set up already.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#20

Post by ceol » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #14

If you're going to use all the new hip tools (and take the time to learn how to use them), just go one step farther and stop using Wordpress.

I got the feeling this plugin was for people who need to— for whatever reason, be it work or otherwise— make a lot of Wordpress themes. In that regard, it's pretty neat. I wouldn't go so far as to learn HAML and how to use the RVM just to make a friend a blog theme, though.

Still, I dislike how the programming community jumps on someone for making something interesting— even if it's not immediately useful for everyone. I get the same feeling in reddit's /r/programming whenever a post pops up about someone using a "NoSQL" database. It seems the majority of comments tend to be people negatively criticizing the OP's choice instead of providing something constructive to the existing project.