If you've done any research on the internet, you will have come across a host of WordPress frameworks and premium themes (which can often be used as frameworks).
First off, a premium theme is simply a nicely (sometimes an amazingly) designed WordPress theme that often also has many, really cool features. The author may have taken the time to include a host of JavaScript enhancements, like a rotating header slideshow, "Ajaxified" comment forms and endless "widgetized" areas, as well as additional custom areas in the administration panel where you can easily manage and update all the custom enhancements.
Secondly (and more importantly), a premium theme is one that the developer wants you to pay for because they took the time to code up that design and include all those nice enhancements. Hence the "premium" on the theme.
Tip
Be careful with customizing premium themes
While premium theme designers often offer many ways to easily customize their theme (a perk of choosing their theme over others), the images, CSS, and JavaScripts of the theme are not required to fall under the WordPress GPL license (we'll learn all about this in Chapter 6, Your Theme in Action). The authors may require you to leave their name, link, or other copyright/attribution information somewhere within the theme. Essentially, read the seller's license information to understand what you have the right to change and use common sense. Don't steal other people's design work to pass off as your own. Really, it's just not nice.
Frameworks are in many ways similar to premium themes, but the focus of the framework is not so much to be a "theme" all by itself but to be more of a "starter kit" that strips the need for understanding the WordPress'Theme API out of the design process and usually also adds great additional features and functionality. Most frameworks work on the assumption that you'll create a child theme of your own for the look and feel you want. Because frameworks do offer designers a "quick start" as well as extra features, similar to premium themes, some frameworks require purchasing or licensing for each site you use them on. There are also some very good open source frameworks that are free to download and use.
Frameworks are particularly useful to designers who are short on time, very good with CSS, and don't want to deal with the learning curve of having to understand the WordPress template page hierarchy, template tags, and plugin API hooks.
Note
We'll learn later in Chapter 4, Advanced Theme Features, of this book that you can actually create a child theme off any theme, be it a framework theme, a premium theme, or your best friend's WordPress theme experiment.
The whole point of this book is to introduce you to these concepts and introduce you to the basics of WordPress theme features so that you can create elegant comprehensive themes from scratch. You can then see how getting a little creative will enable you to develop any kind of site you can imagine with WordPress.
You'll also be able to better take advantage of a theme framework, as you'll understand what the framework is accomplishing for you "under the hood", and you would also be able to better customize the framework if you need to.
For many frameworks, there is still some amount of learning curve to getting up and running with them. But less of it will deal directly with futzing with PHP code to get WordPress to do what you want.
We'd encourage you to take a look at development with a framework and compare it to development from scratch. Having the skills this book provides you with under your belt will only help, even if you choose to go with a framework to save time.
Note
Popular theme frameworks to choose from
More and more frameworks show up every day, and each framework tries to address and handle slightly different needs. As a bonus, some frameworks add options into the WordPress administration panel that allow the end user to add and remove features to/from the child theme they've selected.
The right framework for you will depend on your development style and the needs of your site, but some popular frameworks are listed next.
Themes that offer a lot of child themes which you can customize yourself:
- Thematic (http://themeshaper.com/thematic/)
- Hybrid (http://themehybrid.com/)
Premium frameworks with additional features are as follows:
- Carrington (http://carringtontheme.com/)
- Thesis (http://diythemes.com/)
These frameworks may appear complex at first, but offer a range of rich features for developing themes and, especially if you understand the essentials of creating WordPress themes (as you will after reading this book), can really aid you in speeding up your theme development.
Again, there are many theme frameworks available. A quick Google search for "WordPress Theme Frameworks" will turn up quite a range to choose from.