I finally upgraded KingdomGeek to Thesis 1.6 — I’m rather late to the game, which might surprise some of you.
Truth is, I’m no longer much involved with Thesis at all, for a variety of reasons which I don’t really care to go into at this point. However, I still have the OpenHook plugin, which I’m not about to abandon. I have some ideas to improve OpenHook, but if I’m going to push forward with it, I need to do so using the latest Thesis codebase. (Incidentally, the latest codebase totally nerfed the custom styling I was using… so we’re back to default for the time being. I really dislike that I now have to override colors. I dove into Thesis because it was minimalistic and easy to style; now I have to do half my work in a custom style sheet and half of it in the layout panel… Simplify, simplify, simplify.)
I upgraded KingdomGeek because, against all common sense, I prefer to do my development here. I do this for two reasons: KingdomGeek isn’t my primary source of income, so downtime doesn’t kill me. Also, you users are far more likely to catch certain gaffes that I may take months to find, if I ever do. In other words, many eyes are better than two. Oh, and yes, I realize my nav menu looks terrible. You can still click it, though; go ahead, don’t be afraid… You’re making it self-conscious now.
The next version of OpenHook, I hope, will greatly improve user experience and efficiency. I plan to rewrite things from the ground up to make the code simpler and sexier — in the spirit of Thesis itself. What this means is that I will be potentially nuking all of your current OpenHook customizations (that’s one of many possible bugs I’m envisioning in this scenario…). In other words, when you see an update notification, don’t dive headlong into it. Check feedback on Twitter first — it’ll either be praise or cursing for @KingdomGeek; take that and decide whether to upgrade or not when the time comes. ;) (Yes, I do test my code, but like I said, bugs slip by me. I’ve not attuned my perfectionism enough to be a great coder.)
So what will OpenHook have in the future? (And this is future… Don’t expect an update anytime too soon.) Well, there are a number of things I have in mind (maybe I’ll finally ajaxify things a bit?), but the big win that I have on the top of my list is sandboxing. On more than one occasion I’ve heard of users making some modifications only to discover their blog is screwed up. Fatal errors are the pits, and I’m hoping to set up OpenHook to protect against fatal errors. (Lesser errors are still wholly your responsibility. ;)
Now’s the time to drop feature requests, though. I’m a bit out of touch with the Thesis community — I don’t have the time for it like I used to, primarily — so let me know for what you all have been longing, ‘kay?
You actually don’t HAVE to split your work if you don’t want to. The options in the layout panel are overridden by anything you do in custom_functions or custom_styles.
I think the sandboxing idea is a great one. I routinely miss closing a tag in custom functions & throw the entire site into an error.
I’m sure there are other requests I have, I’ll think on it & come back with more.
Hey Rick — Think jQuery “Accordion” for the next update. Also, hit me on Twitter. I’d be happy to help youuuu :)
Rick — Glad to hear a new OpenHook update is in the works. Miss seeing you over at the Thesis forums. Hope all is well and Happy Holidays!
I know I can override via the custom stylesheet, but then that just adds unnecessary bloat — styles are defined in Thesis’ layout file and then again in the custom one. Way back in Thesis’ early day, it had one stylesheet that had minimal styles to display the single, default style. I liked that; simple, elegant, and much easier to customize via a custom stylesheet. Less overhead is almost always a good thing — it’s the reason I keep a copy of the Sandbox theme around for reference.
Yes, Greg, some sort of handy accordion-like effect has been on my notes for a while now. Someday I’ll take the time to figure out how jQuery actually works. I’ll keep your offer in mind. :)
And thanks for the encouragement, Chris. Happy holidays to you as well!
You will be amazed out ridiculous easy it is. I promise.
Hi Rick!
First of all hope you have a Merry Christmas and thank you for all your hard work on OpenHook!
This may fall completely outside the scope of what you envision for OpenHook but I would really like a way to incorporate better fonts using TypeKit.
I would like a way to enter my TypeKit key and then have my TypeKit fonts listed as one of the available fonts within Thesis Design Options.
It looks like WordPress.com is now implementing this.
http://blog.typekit.com/2009/12/22/customize-your-wordpress-blog-with-typekit-fonts/
Thats my list. :)
Thanks again,
Alex
Yeah, that’s outside the scope of OpenHook. There’s already a WordPress plugin that may serve your needs, however.
Thanks Rick, I am familiar with that plugin. I guess the missing link would be some type of link to make the fonts visible/available in within Thesis Design Options.
Thanks again!
That’d require Chris making the design panel fully plugin-accessible; you might nudge him with that request. Could make for some interesting possibilities. :D
Done! Hopefully it gets due consideration.
Thanks!
Greetings;
I’m not sure my question is being posted on the Thesis boards, so many thanks in advance for your time. I’ve been using OpenHooks to put spiffy graphics (for page links) on my home page. As I attempt to edit those graphics and links, they seem to be duplicating themselves on the page! At this point, I seem to be up the four copies of any graphic I put into the “before teaser box” hook (or any other, for that matter). I have a single image in the “feature box” hook, and it continues to work properly. Any advice or guidance to this relative newbie would be appreciated.
Thanks and blessings;
Bill
Typekit yes!
Typekit yes!
Typekit yes!
:D
Typekit no. Request them to make an open source WordPress plugin. It’s outside the scope of OpenHook, which from the beginning has had more to do with function and less to do with style. I appreciate the suggestion, though, it’s just that I’m not the person to suggest it to.