Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Skinning and designing Serendipity (CSS, HTML, Smarty)
Lux
Regular
Posts: 764
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:36 pm
Location: Grüt, Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Lux »

Hi!

Would it be possible to add a sticky post which contains all responsive themes we have? It should contain download locations as well.

As far as I am aware, I see theses themes:
  • 2k11
  • Bartleby
  • Clean Blog
  • Resy
  • S9yPr
  • Timeline
It would be great to have a possibility to sort the templates in the backend as well (responsive first).

Cheers

Dirk
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by yellowled »

Lux wrote:As far as I am aware, I see theses themes:
  • 2k11
  • Bartleby
  • Clean Blog
  • Resy
  • S9yPr
  • Timeline
What's S9yPr? There's also Next.

Here's the thing about a “list with download links” – why would you need download links? 2k11, Clean Blog and Next are part of the core, the plan is (at some point, which will take time still) to only have responsive themes in the core. Unless Don objects, I can very well see Timeline become a core theme.

All other responsive themes (as far as I know) are on Spartacus. There is no need to download any of them from a third-party site, so …?
Lux wrote:It would be great to have a possibility to sort the templates in the backend as well (responsive first).
I see what you want to achieve by that, I just don't think it is necessary or worth the effort. Yes, it makes sense to educate people about responsive themes. I cringe every time I see a s9y site using an outdated theme. But the reality is, we can not really influence which themes people want to use.

I think our devs' time can be spent better than to discuss and implement something that will (hopefully sooner than later) become obsolete anyway. :)

YL
Lux
Regular
Posts: 764
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:36 pm
Location: Grüt, Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Lux »

yellowled wrote: What's S9yPr? There's also Next.
S9yPr: http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20615

I do not know Next, where can I find it?
yellowled wrote: All other responsive themes (as far as I know) are on Spartacus. There is no need to download any of them from a third-party site, so …?
We will never have all themes in the care or on Spartacus.

As example: You did not remember about S9ypr ...
yellowled wrote: I see what you want to achieve by that, I just don't think it is necessary or worth the effort. Yes, it makes sense to educate people about responsive themes. I cringe every time I see a s9y site using an outdated theme. But the reality is, we can not really influence which themes people want to use.
I do not want to educate anyone, but I want to distinguish between modern - read: responsive - and outdated templates.
yellowled wrote: I think our devs' time can be spent better than to discuss and implement something that will (hopefully sooner than later) become obsolete anyway. :)
Absolutely agreed, even though I think it would neither take a lot time to make a sticky post nor to sort the templates.

Cheers

Dirk
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by yellowled »

Lux wrote:I do not know Next, where can I find it?
In /templates/next/, but I do not remember in which 2.0.x we added it. :)
Lux wrote:We will never have all themes in the care or on Spartacus.
Well, if it's not in the core or on Spartacus, it's an “inofficial” third-party theme. If a theme is “finished” and meets certain characteristics, there is absolutely no reason to not put it at least on Spartacus, unless the author objects.
Lux wrote:As example: You did not remember about S9ypr ...
Yeah, because it's not on Spartacus. :P
Lux wrote:Absolutely agreed, even though I think it would neither take a lot time to make a sticky post nor to sort the templates.
I'm happy to make a sticky post, I just don't want to maintain it, and unfortunately, it is a tad more complicated to sort themes in the backend than you think. Starts with the fact that we need a way to tell that a theme is responsive. We'd need some kind of new field for that, and that will become obsolete at some point as well …

YL
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by yellowled »

yellowled wrote:
Lux wrote:I do not know Next, where can I find it?
In /templates/next/, but I do not remember in which 2.0.x we added it. :)
Initally added to the core repository in February 2015, which makes me think it was released with 2.0.1 or maybe 2.0.2. But I think it was not mentioned specifically in the release blog post. Soft release. :wink:

YL
Don Chambers
Regular
Posts: 3652
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 2:40 am
Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Don Chambers »

I would be more in favor of the concept of tags for themes if we can do that at some point, rather than a sticky forum post. I have no intention on creating a theme that isn't responsive, and I would bet no other theme author does either.... it will not take long until knowing that a theme is responsive really doesn't matter much.

And yes, I planned to add Timeline theme to the core once its been tested a bit. :wink:
=Don=
onli
Regular
Posts: 2822
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:04 pm
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by onli »

I suggested before (don't know where) to separate in the backend between modern and legacy themes. Should be easy enough to do. Since it is now not only me wanting that I'd add it to my todo list (but if someone has time to implement it, please go ahead).
Lux
Regular
Posts: 764
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:36 pm
Location: Grüt, Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Lux »

onli wrote:I suggested before (don't know where) to separate in the backend between modern and legacy themes. Should be easy enough to do. Since it is now not only me wanting that I'd add it to my todo list (but if someone has time to implement it, please go ahead).
Perfect. Thank you!

Cheers

Dirk
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by yellowled »

onli wrote:I suggested before (don't know where) to separate in the backend between modern and legacy themes. Should be easy enough to do. Since it is now not only me wanting that I'd add it to my todo list (but if someone has time to implement it, please go ahead).
Before you get started on implementing anything, I would really like to discuss what you consider to be “modern” and “legacy”. Because I think those categories don't really say much. From a certain point of view, even 2k11 is “legacy” now. (And please remember that it will need to be implemented on the Spartacus website as well. It does not make sense to have this only in the backend.)

Also, for a non-technical user (your average John Doe starting his first blog), both “modern” and ”legacy” don't really say much (neither does “responsive”, by the way). Most of them will probably still choose by what they like visually.

I do think it is a good idea to educate users about which themes are “recommended” (we can not do much more than recommend unless we remove themes altogether, and even then …), but I'm not sure throwing tags or categories at them that don't really say much (to them) is a good way to do that. (No, I don't have a better way myself at the moment.)

YL
onli
Regular
Posts: 2822
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:04 pm
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by onli »

I don't think we should overdiscuss this. I will implement a means for separation and a selection that seems sound to me and then you or whoever wants is free to tweak that selection.

I highly disagree that it does not make sense to make the backend without the spartacus website. The backend is highly more visible and comfortable, and I care about it, neither of whichis true for the spartacus site. Not reworking it won't block the backend change.

I would have no issue with calling the selection of modern themes recommended instead of modern. In my eyes that is all the same, both gives users some help which they can use or not.
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by yellowled »

onli wrote:I don't think we should overdiscuss this.
Fine, then go ahead and implement it the way you think it should be. I will not try to dicuss something you very obviously do not even want to discuss. That to me appears to be a waste of time.

YL
onli
Regular
Posts: 2822
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:04 pm
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by onli »

Okay. Don't know why that annoys you, but I indeed do not want to discuss it. I just want a first solution that can then be improved. There is no harm in that. Enough said.
Timbalu
Regular
Posts: 4598
Joined: Sun May 02, 2004 3:04 pm

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Timbalu »

My means on this are:
  • Make a forum post sticky to add and recommend all current themes by the ones that know about the history and development of themes. This was the originally asked question! This could as well respond to the FAQ or theme overview section in the docs. (And could as well be linked to the "Dashboards Further Links" layer list.)
  • Stick with current alphabetical order in Serendipitys (Spartacus) theme section. This is totally ok, since it respects the user as an adult. There is no need to break this into parts!
  • We may implement an order switch vice versa and may add another check for the 'Last Updated: x.xx.xx' date field of the theme(s) array. And we could easily add another checked item for future or responsive themes into the info.txt file(s) to be checked by this order switch too...
Regards,
Ian

Serendipity Styx Edition and additional_plugins @ https://ophian.github.io/ @ https://github.com/ophian
onli
Regular
Posts: 2822
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:04 pm
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by onli »

https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity/comm ... a2261b8788 implements a section called recommended containing themes that have "Recommended: Yes" in their info.txt. I added that item to 2k11, next and clean-blog, and to photo and bartleby on spartacus. But I could not test yet whether the spartacus themes gets properly added to the new section.

Ian, the lists itself are still alphabetical. Please note though that "treating them as adults" has nothing to do with giving them only an alphabetical sorted lists or not. In fact, alphabetical lists are often the worst of all choices, see https://www.nngroup.com/articles/alphab ... ostly-die/.
Don Chambers
Regular
Posts: 3652
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 2:40 am
Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Contact:

Re: Sticky Post for responsive Templates?

Post by Don Chambers »

I *think* I understand why you guys want to do something to differentiate some themes from others.... mostly because there are 1) many older themes and 2) few newer/modern/responsive themes. Perhaps there are other reasons.

But I am not sure "recommend" is really all that clear for all themes, or all users. Why is it recommended? Merely because it is new?

As an example, Maybe I am a user that needs a lot of sidebar stuff... Clean Blog is the last theme that should be recommended as it has no sidebars.

Is it possible to implement some kind of tagging (responsive, s9y 2.0, backend theme, magazine, etc)?
How about listing themes by either release date or date most recently revised?

I just think it is difficult to recommend anything without knowing specific needs/goals for the site. I also think we would provide better value to users by providing ways to sort and/or limit the themes they are looking for.
=Don=
Post Reply