Earlier this week, I released WPUnlimited, a new WordPress theme system that I hope everyone will enjoy.

While I am talking about it endlessly elsewhere, I wanted to cover one of the key differences that I think coders will really enjoy in using WPUnlimited: traditional theme files.

So you might be asking yourself why traditional theme files is important or worth mentioning, but one of the issues I have always had with Thesis, a theme I enjoyed was the fact that opening header.php didn’t really give me a normal WordPress header.php theme file. It was just a call to another PHP file, making the whole customization aspect a nightmare for a beginner programmer.

A good example of the difference is to look at a popular WordPress theme’s index file, which only includes something along the lines of: html_framework();

Just that one line… no mention of includes for headers or footers, no loops, nothing.

This leaves someone looking to customize how posts are displayed with the horrible task of digging through files to see where that PHP code is, and how they can manipulate it.

WordPress Unlimited’s theme files look very much like you’ve seen since the Classic theme was created, with easy to understand header, footer, and index pages that makes editing the theme easy for anyone immersed in WordPress already.

As a side note, WPUnlimited also has a great affiliate program, so if you enjoy the theme, I’d love it if you passed it on to your friends, and earned yourself a 40% commission on any of your sales. Even if you don’t buy WPUnlimited, you can sign up for the affiliate program. Check it out, it could be a great opportunity to promote the next amazing WordPress theme.

Originally posted on February 26, 2009 @ 10:55 pm