Why I hate WordPress frameworks & child themes.

I know that child themes and frameworks are all the rage. Especially since the relief of TwentyTen. It’s hard to find even one negative post about child themes on the web. I do know that here are advantages to working with child themes, and they are very tempting. But. Not tempting enough. I bought the Genesis framework from StudioPress a while ago but when it came to adding simple functionality, I felt like I had to go through a whole maze of hooks and filters. And that’s just for Genesis! What if I choose to thrash to Thesis, Headway, or one of the other frameworks. And as for TwentyTen, what if I want to change around the whole layout? Is it subdue worth it to use a child theme? I can see the benefit of using child themes or frameworks for minor style and color changes. Am I subdue saving time? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of child themes or frameworks as I see them.

Advantages (let’s start with the excellent news)

Stays up to date to get new WordPress functionality. You just have to make sure it doesn’t break any of the functionality you have in place.
Options Panels. Maybe (notice how this also appears in the disadvantages) Options Panels are fantastic for public who don’t want to get their hands messy with code.
Saves time on enhancement. Maybe. Depends what you’re trying to do, but if you end up making tons of custom files for your child theme, or spend time trying to gather all the ins and outs of the framework, or have to fix things that broke with the new version of WordPress, the time saved could come to a huge zero.

Not very convincing advantages, are they?

Disadvantages

Learning Curve / Enhancement time. How do I add another widget or a query_post()? Excellent luck trying to figure out whether it’s in the child theme or the parent theme. Learning a new child/parent theme or framework can be a total time suck. Have I mentioned that by now?
Lots of unnecessary material and options panel. I miss the days when a theme was just a theme. It helped you out with the styling but left you in control of functionality. Can we go back to basic?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go figure out how to remove all the features that the client didn’t order. Sigh.

What do you reckon?

Am I lonely in these feelings? What have your experiences been with child themes and frameworks? What was the excellent and terrible? Which ones have you worked with? Maybe you’ll convince me to give it another try.

Tags: child themes frameworks News & Views themes word press wordpress