WordPress MU

In a recent trac ticket I brought a core modification up for suggestion.

In turn, it was kicked out and recommended to be brought up as a modification for WP, which would then filter down to MU.

Unfortunately, my opinion differs on this one, and here is why.

With WP, how many users (by percentage) actually have so many themes lying around that it would be a benefit to them? My guess is that there would be an extremely small percentage of users keeping an untidy house like that.

Now with MU, it's almost a given that you're going to have dozens of themes if it's being used as intended. That being the case, you now have hundreds, thousands or more little blog admins hitting that page. That's something that is more of a majority in MU, and multiplied by the number of users. Needless to say, a single page loading that many screenshots (which let's admit that most theme authors have really large file sizes on their screenshots) just kills your bandwidth and load times. Therefore discouraging the end user with an unpleasant wait time and experience.

I'd be happy for anyone to comment on this, and whether you feel it's a WP or MU issue.

Topic open for debate.

Completely agree with you. Thats clearly an wpmu issue. And there are several possible solutions floating around in this forum, from paginate, to hide screenshot and show on mouse-over...

They should just pick one and implement it as a core feature.

Agreed. Considering most admins aren't reducing the size of their screencaps for their themes, some themes.php pages are multiple megs in size.

Most regular wp users aren't going to have hundreds of themes installs. At most they'll have just a couple.

This is clearly an wpmu issue.

i think Luna is right. this just seems like it should be a standard feature of a platform designed for thousands of users. single WP users generally don't load 200+ themes. the ones that do, already know what they've got. New users on WPMU sites do not. Then once they've found the themes page, it takes a minute to load.

I think that this should be a core feature specifically because mu is designed for user who might need to wade thru 2-300+ themes before they find the one for them. how awful is their experience right now. I know plugins are an option, but I think this is important enough to go in the core.

I have to agree as well. There are some things that don't belong in the core but this one most definitely does.

Thanks,
Andrew

That's the problem with this area though. If it were as simple as a plugin, it would be on wpmudev.org instead of trac.

Maybe if there were a filter hook for the $themes array right after the h2 tag for "Available Themes", it wouldn't be an issue. You could add a plugin to filter the array, based on criteria, present the paged links and also filter out the array to only those keys needed.

However, such a hook doesn't exist. It would be a reasonable compromise though, even though it wouldn't allow for page links at the bottom of the page. That could probably be hooked in through the admin footer though, although it could be a little messy.

+1 for core.

but.... even if it is of little use for the SU WP blog, I fail to see whats wrong with submitting this tikect to the WP trac and letting it trickle down.

Looks like a solution will be in 2.6:
http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/633

Thanks,
Andrew

That's how it looks.

http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/7961

Guess we'll see how it goes when it gets rolled in.

Agreed all around, even a hook would be nice.

*off to check tickets*

Ahah! There's a demo site here: http://wp.chrisjohnston.org/ . Don;t see too much of a difference yet but the themes are tagged.

My single user blog has maybe 3 themes, but my wpmu install has over two hundred.

Eliminating the screenshots is the key, agreed.

Here's my mashup of an mu-plugin that replaces the default themes admin page:
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Rollover-Themes-List

My local *regualr* WP install that I use to test themes has well over a couple hundred. :D

Here's a mashup of an mu-plugin that replaces the default themes admin with a paginated version:
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Paged-Themes

Replaces the WPMU2.5.1 trunk version(or any recent) of themes.php with http://trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-admin/themes.php?rev=7972.

The Paged Themes plugin appears to also display those themes not approved for use by the general end users. I only have 3 themes marked as approved on our test install but yet all of the themes show up and you can use them.

It also appears that we're seeing the following line:

All of this theme’s files are located in wp-content/themes/CurrentTheme.

That's awfully confusing to end users.

Edit: It's also putting the widgets link in front of the Themes link within the submenu. That's kind of confusion as well.

True enough. It was a hastey chop job from the wp2.6 trac version.
Added `
$allowed_themes = get_site_allowed_themes();
if( $allowed_themes == false )
$allowed_themes = array();

$blog_allowed_themes = wpmu_get_blog_allowedthemes();
if( is_array( $blog_allowed_themes ) )
$allowed_themes = array_merge( $allowed_themes, $blog_allowed_themes );
if( $blog_id != 1 )
unset( $allowed_themes[ "h3" ] );

if( isset( $allowed_themes[ wp_specialchars( $ct->stylesheet ) ] ) == false )
$allowed_themes[ wp_specialchars( $ct->stylesheet ) ] = true;

reset( $themes );`

<b>after</b>

$themes = get_themes();
$ct = current_theme_info();

I've updated the project at http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Paged-Themes

Looks good. Thanks.

I'm getting a fair amount of movement of the screencap image when I click on it with Firefox 2.0.0.14 though.

[quote=tdjcbe]Edit: It's also putting the widgets link in front of the Themes link within the submenu. That's kind of confusion as well.[/quote]

You'd think
$submenu['themes.php'][5] = 'blah'; would put 'blah' where the original menu was, but it doesn't.

Unset and move the widget menu, I guess.

tdjcbe says "I'm getting a fair amount of movement of the screencap image when I click on it with Firefox 2.0.0.14 though"

I don't have a sniff.

Unset and move the widget menu, I guess.

Thanks for looking into the issue. I have too many soccer moms on our sites and I have to make it as easy as possible for them.

In playing around with the menu order, I placed the Design menu on the right next to the Plugins. Made sense that it's over there anyway. Content in the left menus, tinker'n tools in the right. It's that way in my install.

project removed

WPMU2.6 released

hey guys don't be so cryptic. does this mean the project has been removed because the features are now included in wpmu 2.6???

That would probably be a good assumption.

haha,
the other two posters were to lazy, just posting 2 words each, and now you tag along and tell me its a good assumption :-(

I see, I'll have to go check the release docs of wpmu 2.6 myself ;-)

Uh.. yeah, themes pagination *is* included in 2.6 :P

and theme previews.

C'mon... keep up will ya? :D

Good to see theme pagination included in MU -- it would probably turn out to be more useful in MU environments than in regular WP.