They advertised as if this were a great thing: thousands of themes to choose from! But is it so great?
But “thousands” is actually too much choice. Do you want to give me meaningful choice? Give me “dozens” of themes. Or maybe even “handfuls” of themes. No one has time to look through thousands of anything. Much less do any sort of helpful comparison of the differences. How can you compare so many things? You can’t.
If you had a grid or a chart, it would probably max out the number of cells to compute! Forget just the numbers, it’s just not fun.
Trader Joe’s
If I go to a giant supermarket, a big-box monster, I can choose from too many kinds of peanut butter. But what if there were a place where I could go that would give me a choice between the basic features of the product and then didn’t have a “choice” beyond that? What if they just had creamy and nutty? That was it? Do you want nutty peanut butter or do you want creamy peanut butter?
Do you want creamy or nutty peanut butter?
But I like (no, love) Trader Joe’s. I’m biased. I like being in there. I like their peanut butter. I don’t even care so much if it’s nutty or creamy. But it’s even a pleasure to choose because the choice occurred when I walked in the front door. I’m not choosing which brand of peanut butter, I’m choosing which store to shop in. Then I’m just going to use what they have on offer and I’m going to trust them and I’m going to be OK with my decision.
WOO Themes
I truly started out this post with peanut butter in mind, but this being a WordPress site and all …
I’ve had it with shopping for themes. I don’t want to sift through thousands or even hundreds of themes. At this point, if you’ve been following WPU, I’m pretty happy with my choice of a single theme (WOO Themes Canvas). Is it the best theme? Is it the only theme? No, of course not. But it’s a good one. I also know it well. Aha, but here comes the twist, because I now know it well, I like it more and more. But it also helps me know its limitations. I know what it can do but I also know what it can’t do. It makes life (read: business) easier for both me and the client. “Oh, can it do feature XYZ?” “No.” “Oh, OK.” Done, clear, move onto next topic.
Shop for Features
Back to peanut butter. What are our options, really? Creamy, nutty, got that. Organic. Sure. What about almond butter? That’s an option, but it does taste different. Maybe it’s not the same thing. Do you want peanut butter or are you open to anything that will go on your slice of bread? What are you really looking for at the end of the day? Peanut butter or a spreadable something for your sandwich? When you answer that question, that helps you make your decision.
I like creamy.
How much choice is too much choice? When does it become a blur?
Haha dammit Bradley I want peanut butter now.
I agree, thousands of themes doesn’t mean thousands of great quality themes, most of them are filler which is the main issue (and not updated) – But even if they were, you’d need a good filtering system, and I’ve found other ‘finished’ themes i’ve ended up pretty much stripping them back and am never fully happy with them. I guess at the end of the day it’s all a bit subjective, and I’m fussy.
I guess that’s the point with Canvas, it’s just that, a blank canvas. To me, it’s the happy medium between starting from scratch and using a purpose built ‘finished’ theme.
I’ve started using the Custom Post Type UI plugin by WebDevStudios.com in conjunction with the Advanced Custom Fields plugin by Elliot Condon to extend the functionality of Canvas, (and to get a bit more structured data happening), then adding in a few extra page types in my child theme. Still beats writing the whole thing from scratch.
now off to find some peanut butter…
Hi Jessica,
I’m even making myself hungry for peanut butter now! Even just a spoonful … 😉
I’d love to hear more about what you’re doing to enhance Canvas further. Frankly, I’ve been so busy the past few weeks, I’m just getting client work done (albeit in Canvas), but no time for fun stuff like “enhancements”! What kinds of things are you doing? Care to share here?
I think this really important and this is what I’m trying to “get at” here with my rants and raves about Canvas, “Still beats writing the whole thing from scratch.” I completely agree. It’s a solid framework to build on.
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Sure, nothing exciting to show just yet, but I’ve just started a site for a medical practice that i’m doing this for. I will keep you posted.
So far I’ve created a staff post type, and replaced the input fields to my custom ones – will make it easier for them to add/edit/remove staff themselves (and still have it look good uniformly – always a danger when passing over the data entry to clients with a WYSIWYG editor!)
I have pull downs so you can say if they’re a doctor/nurse/admin/specialist etc. The more structured I have that data, the more flexible it will be to display around the site and on mobile devices. Which i guess is more about making your content responsive as well rather than just the look of it.
Have you read any of the A List Apart books? I like them – they’re nice and short haha. There’s a great one called ‘Content Strategy for Mobile’, all about this stuff.
What about peanut butter cups? They seem to be more of an American thing, I rarely see them here in Australia.
Jess
I’ve been hesitant to use too many custom post types, but you bring up an excellent point, ” … still have it look good uniformly.” In your example (staff), you’ll use CSS so that each staff member entered will look like the other staff members entered. Great idea. Also to help keep things responsive. Thanks for sharing.
I haven’t read the A List Apart books in years, but remember being deep in them way back when.
I LOVE peanut butter cups. 😉
Oh but you’ve got to live a little! There is never going to be a fool proof solution to anything, and web coding is one of the last places where you should become complacent because of what if’s. Sure no one likes the idea of having to go back and doing anything manually, I get that, but given most websites do not have a particularly long shelf life, with lots of things needing to be redone from scratch for every iteration – why not make the most of the tools currently at our disposal?
WordPress became a lot more than just a blogging platform as soon as custom page types were introduced – its not like custom posts are going to go away anytime soon.
I find the two plugins i mentioned above to be a happy medium – if you were to change themes (but why would we ever leave canvas? 😉 ) you don’t lose those post types. Not to mention.. having your own custom fields allows a lot more flexibility on how to display that data on a site, and adds way more longevity to that data in terms of how you might want to use it down the track.
Not just visually either, but how much of it as well. I think that’s a key way of thinking when moving forward for mobile device accessibility, its not just about the CSS. If everything is just clumped into the main WYSIWYG editor, that’s it, its either that chunk or not at all. Separating it out also means you can order the custom posts by any of the custom fields you put in. Also means if your client enters the info they’re more likely to be able to fill in the input fields consistently rather than remember which order you wanted them to put details in a big chunk of a text area (where there are also those tantalizing-to-client ‘change type face, size, colors, bold & italics’ buttons! )
You make a great point here, Jessica, ” … given most websites do not have a particularly long shelf life, with lots of things needing to be redone from scratch for every iteration – why not make the most of the tools currently at our disposal?”
For example, I’ve always built sites for (and helped promote) writers. I’m planning on creating a Canvas child theme for writers. Maybe with custom post types, I could make a better “My Books” page that’s geared towards showing off the covers, maybe an excerpt, a blurb, etc. How hard would that be to build?