I really am such a dork. First I thought I was “cool” because I finally had a reason to have a github account. And now I’m all giddy about the idea of the Kitchen Sink HTML5 Base plugin being hosted on WordPress.org. Woohoo!

I felt like I was applying to some prestigious institution (and it may very well be) but the people at plugin review central are probably just going to think I am a nut job.

Below is the contents of my “application” for KST to be hosted at WordPress.org ;)

——————————

Current description on the github project:
–
WordPress Theme and Plugin development base to use as a sensible starting point for developing WordPress themes (and possibly other plugins) including semantic HTML5 awesomeness via HTML5 Boilerplate. Various classes and methods for rapidly implementing admin pages, options, metaboxes, and all that stuff you put in every functions.php or plugin file you’ve ever made. ;)
–

This is a theme/plugin developers plugin. Starting from the idea of creating an “empty” Parent theme to house all the stuff I might want to use on custom client themes I realized it was more like a plugin full of optional classes and methods for rapidly USING the awesome WordPress software without having to worry about all the details. In short a plugin to let you think about creating and doing as opposed to debugging and documentation.

It IS NOT a plugin for end users (directly except as a dependency) as it does nothing really unless a theme or another plugin invokes it. Though as Kitchen Sink HTML5 Base (KST) matures it will provide site/blog owners the ability to inhibit the functionality KST itself, the themes/plugins that use it, and ultimately allowing full on/off functionality of it’s internal modules as if they were separate plugins.

Current functionality of soon to be ready Version 0.1:

* A set of “sensible defaults” for things you were probably going to do in your theme anyway.
** Adding both front end and admin features and customizations (e.g. add_theme_support(), comments formatting, and adding a Theme Help quick link for the built-in Help file/module).
* Help. A module for building and adding help entries on custom theme features and general usage to the built-in help files that appear whenever a developer uses any of the features listed here in their theme/plugin
* Options. Rapidly create options and pages via auto form builder, template file, or callback (and a settings array)
* MetaBoxes. Abstracting WPAlchemy_MetaBox class easily create metaboxes and can also use the auto form builder.
* Forms. Methods for implementing a contact form with a templated system and shortcode/method output of the forms and results. Can also use the auto form builder (well almost there).
* WordPress bonus methods. Extra methods for simplifying things like registering sidebars.
* As well as various simple widgets and tools that you might probably need for the majority of your theme projects anyway such as sidebar next/previous post navigation.

The core of the project is really the sensible defaults, help, options, metaboxes, forms, and any bonus/replacement WordPress methods. The idea is for people to be able to use this plugin instead of a Parent Theme framework that they make child themes from for a few reasons: 1) Because I think custom client themes should be Parent themes with the option of creating a child theme if they want to mess it up 2) For people who want to distribute themes but want access to a theme framework they really can’t distribute through the WordPress hosting/directory service (as far as I know). 3) I have actually heard people talking about “grand-child” themes and this seems silly (though what I’ve done here is similar it seems like a more logical solution).

But mostly I think the whole thing is a pretty cool idea that at least a few developers might be into. At least I know my clients will be happy to get “free” bug fixes and optional feature additions ;)

Sorry for the long winded description but I wanted to give some background. Despite seeing that other people have endeavored similar “framework plugins” they all seemed to be of a slightly different scope (or defunct). So I wanted to give you some background since I am new to the WordPress community but have fallen in love with the software and hopefully through projects such as this I can give back a little.

See the current source code:

https://github.com/beingzoe/wpplugin-kitchen-sink-html5-base

Review the wiki at github:

https://github.com/beingzoe/wpplugin-kitchen-sink-html5-base/wiki

We are not ready to submit this week but probably in the next week or two and I wasn’t sure how long the whole review process took so I thought I would submit this week in case it takes months ;)

Thank you for your time. I look forward to chatting with you all in the future. Oh and tell the folks who created the Theme Check plugin their work is appreciated.

——————————