The Scourge of Kubrick

2. Remi said:

I guess the theme would be as popular as the other WordPress themes if it wasn’t the default WP one ;)

Posted on May 24, 2005 11:37 AM | #

4. Bob said:

In an effort to get the new Wordpress up and running, I went with Kubrick for about half a day while I searched the ‘net for other themes to use in its place. In the end, I settled on Quentin, which is nice, certainly different from Kubrick, and yes, too damn easy. It’s the same reason I went out and grabbed a three-column liquid CSS template for my new site – I can add the pretty bells and whistles in with the content, but getting the basic layout done would have taken too long, and I’m already feeling the pressure of getting the site done so I can release it to the public.

One of these days, I’ll scrap Quentin in favor of a hand-rolled design for bobsawyer.com. Until then, at least it’s not Kubrick.

(PS: Love the live preview!)

Posted on May 24, 2005 11:45 AM | #

6. DD said:

Nothing to take away from Kubrick but I don’t believe it would be so popular if it wasn’t the default theme in WP 1.5 – I have seen much better designs, as I am sure you have. However some people either don’t have the time to create their own design or simply don’t know how as they may not be web developers.

WordPress versions prior to 1.5 had an ugly default theme which was there purposely in order to push people to create their own blogging identity and uniqueness on the internet. But I guess as WP has grown as one of the most popular blogging solutions they were pressed to give bloggers and “out-of-the-box” solution that also looked good for most part.

Although I too have to admit that I have been running Kubrick since the 1.5 release simply because I don’t have the time to design anything at the moment – as the time I do have I spend on writing content for my blog.

Posted on May 24, 2005 11:56 AM | #

8. Greg said:

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that struggled with Drupal’s theming system.

Posted on May 24, 2005 12:13 PM | #

10. Michele said:

I’ve just written a post on my blog to reply to your post.

I think you’re right, but unfortunately not everybody has the ability to design a good theme. That’s why I think Wordpress should let the user choose the theme to use at install time. Wouldn’t it be nice?

Posted on May 24, 2005 12:19 PM | #

12. Keith said:

Adam – I hear ya. But I disagree that WP is all that easy to customize. It wasn’t for me, at least not from scratch. Add to that the ease and relative quality of themes and you’ve got a situation that almost tempts you not to design.

Michele – Agreed and that would probably make Kubrik a bit less common, that’s for sure.

Posted on May 24, 2005 12:29 PM | #

14. Adam Thody said:

Keith - I guess it’s all relative…compared to many other apps I’ve worked with over the years I personally found WP pretty decent when it came to creating my own themes.

I think the ease of themes is a contributing factor, but I think if themes were somehow abolished, you’d just see these people stop blogging altogether as opposed to design their own.

For the majority I believe it’s a matter of “can’t” not “won’t”.

Posted on May 24, 2005 12:52 PM | #

16. Adam Thody said:

“I’ve hardcoded html and use strict web standards but the learning curve at WordPress was steep because I don’t know PHP outside of using includes.”

This is a good point. I often forget that not everyone programs.

In upcoming versions I’m sure we’ll see them switch to a template engine with more non-programmer friendly tags.

Posted on May 24, 2005 01:02 PM | #

18. Keith said:

mahalie – That’s the same problem I had, the PHP and docs were a bit of a steep climb at first. On the upside, I leaned a ton about PHP and now I’m getting pretty comfortable with it and once you get some of it the rest comes easier.

Jason – “The purpose of blogging is to provide easy to setup and easy to update form of web publishing.” Not to nit too much, but that’s debatable. I guess it all depends on your goals, and I guess for many “general public” “bloggers” something like Kubrik is just fine, and you’re right there are many who that just should do.

Posted on May 24, 2005 01:24 PM | #

20. Andrew K said:

Bah! WP1.5 = difficult to skin? Hardly! It’s a walk in the park compared to WP1.2, that’s for damn sure. Once you’ve pulled it to pieces you’ll never look back. I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve used WP for clients – and I can most certainly assure you there was nothing remotely ‘Kubrick’ about the sites.

That said, I 100% agree on your ‘Kubrick fever’ comment. What disturbs me more are blogs which use a slightly modified Kubrick, because you know those are the ones that will stick with it and help age Michael’s design at double the pace.

Although I’ve never downloaded anyone elses themes, Kubrick doesn’t even make my top 3 anymore :( No offence to Michael, of course! It was a breath of fresh air in comparison to the original WP design, but I feel it’s heavy over use has aged it at triple the rate of any other design.

Posted on May 24, 2005 02:33 PM | #

22. Glen C. said:

Heh, good point Craig C. I think if they made the dafault template something so horrifically ugly that it had be changed, we’d see a lot more good designs. I’m thinking bright pink background with red text. But then again, it hasn’t stopped anyone on Xanga. Thank god for Bowman and the rest that worked on the Blogger templates.

Posted on May 24, 2005 03:33 PM | #

24. Geoffrey said:

Interesting post topic. I was thinking just the other day that I tend to ignore blogs that use generic templates. I figure if the author doesn’t care enough to at least try to differentiate themselves a little, the content can’t be worth it. Just another filtering system. I’m sure there’s great content on templated blogs—I just might not get to it.

Posted on May 24, 2005 04:13 PM | #

26. Jonathan Snook said:

I personally used MovableType but when I had to set up a new blog for work I checked out Textpattern first. But found the templating system difficult to use… mostly because I wanted the capability of using PHP. Then I tried WordPress and was quite impressed. I was able to wrap the site design around the template system in just an hour or two. It’s definitely a bonus if you have programming (specifically PHP) experience, that’s for sure.

To battle the monotony, it might be more advantageous if there were more than just two default themes. Like say, offer 10 default themes or offer theme packs when downloading the software.

Posted on May 24, 2005 05:51 PM | #

28. Michael Heilemann said:

Don’t worry Keith, you aren’t the only one tired of Kubrick (It’s with a C mind you). Though at least I come across a Kubrick-based layout and can write it up as a point for me, I don’t know how everyone else handles it ;)

But I think its interesting to note that the popularity of Kubrick probably has little to do with its ‘design’ and more to do with a different need of some kind. Otherwise it would never have spread as far and wide as it has.

To be honest I think we’re still in early days, and the templates, framworks and themes we’re using now are painfully basic and not easily customizable by ‘the common person’. In a few years we should have WYSIWYG drag and drop layouts with color guides and what not, which will certainly make it harder to create a framework, but easier for the end user to customize into something unique.

Posted on May 25, 2005 12:25 AM | #

30. Richard said:

I’m a long time WordPress user and like both aspects of it: that there is now a well designed default theme and lots of others to choose from, and that the theme “system” makes it a lot easier to build your own or start from one and tinker/modify.

As implied above, fewer people stuck with the default theme in earlier versions because it wasn’t visually attractive while Kubrick is so some folks are going to stick with it.

What amazes me here is that all you designers have not said a peep (that I can remember reading) about WordPress’s back (admin) end. I think it’s ugly as sin and poorly layed out and the weakest part of the entire system. How come you guys and gals aren’t building new “themes” for the back end? Or at least baraging Matt with ideas?

Posted on May 25, 2005 07:26 AM | #

32. Billy said:

I agree, Kubrick needs to go. I know the WP folks did a theme competition recently – they should pick the top 2 or 3 to include with the next release. Maybe that would encourage some variety.

I found WP harder to customize then MT. The documentation isn’t nearly as good, and some of the functions are built specifically for Kubrick – they output extra HTML tags just because they’re used in the default theme. That just seems like a bad idea to me.

I like WP now that I have it the way I want it. But getting it there was more painful than it should be…

Posted on May 25, 2005 09:24 AM | #

34. Ian Cheung said:

Only half agree with you there Keith. The problem is that you are looking at it as a designer, are designers the only ones allowed to have nice aesthetically pleasing blogs? I built my own theme but I was thankful that I had Michael’s Kubrick to learn from.

I think the mistake is that there is only one default theme. Many on-line blog services (my wife uses one) have a range to choose from, and choosing a different theme is just a radio button click away. New themes are introduced every month. With WP, you have to search for one you like, download it, and install it. The first step is the most difficult as usually you can’t see the different themes side-by-side and you don’t know if all the elements are implemented until you install a theme. WP should make it as easy as the on-line blogging services to select and change a theme.

I’m actually using a theme from http://wpthemes.info to get one project up and running asap, and I highly recommend Kubrick addicts to look there for alternatives. I’m also looking forward to K2 :o )

Posted on May 25, 2005 10:27 AM | #

36. Michael Heilemann said:

“What amazes me here is that all you designers have not said a peep (that I can remember reading) about WordPress’s back (admin) end. I think it’s ugly as sin and poorly layed out and the weakest part of the entire system. How come you guys and gals aren’t building new “themes” for the back end? Or at least baraging Matt with ideas?”

I am working with a group of other designers as well as Matt, on a new backend.

“I found WP harder to customize then MT. The documentation isn’t nearly as good, and some of the functions are built specifically for Kubrick – they output extra HTML tags just because they’re used in the default theme. That just seems like a bad idea to me.”

Not true. Those functions have always outputted that extra code, Kubrick was built around them, much to my own dismay. I am lobbying to have them ‘straightened out’.

“The one fault I find in theming is the bare PHP everywhere, as opposed to Blogger’s XML tags or some blogs engines’ “token” based systems (I believe textpattern uses these, but dear lord I don’t even know where to start with textpattern). Seems like it wouldn’t take that much work to simplify– at least to allow people who don’t want to write the PHP to use a less powerful but simpler system. Then again, I’m not working on the software, so it’s easy for me to say.”

While it might seem a bit more hostile at first, I personally love the way WordPress does it now (except it has a few flaws here and there). It allows much more control on a template

Posted on May 25, 2005 02:10 PM | #

38. Richard said:

I am working with a group of other designers as well as Matt, on a new backend.

This is great news and I look forward to it Michael.

Having followed what you (Michael) went through in the WP community during the transition from 1.2 to 1.5 I very much appreciate what Kubrick is and what it did for WordPress.

I think many in this thread who use or used MT and are now starting to use WP including Keith would have found that “thread from hell”* discussion intersting and given the differences between the MT community and the WP community.

*during the transition and testing from WP 1.2 to 1.5 it became known that one of Michael’s designs called Kubrick was possibly going to be a theme or maybe even the detault theme in 1.5. The “discussions” that followed were fascinating to track.

Posted on May 25, 2005 03:39 PM | #

40. Paolo said:

I’m a graphic designer and am very proud of my business site’s design but when it came to my blog I really didn’t have the time or inclination to go all out to simply express my thoughts of the day. So I switched from MT just for Kubrick because it was the first template (at the time) that was actually well designed. I played with it a bit and I’ve been satisfied with the results.

Now if you’re so inclined, take two minutes and browse the blogs of those naysayers who don’t like Kubrick. Glass houses, and all that.

Hey, to each their own – do what makes you happy but forgive me for not taking this discussion too seriously.

Carry on.

Posted on May 26, 2005 06:31 AM | #

42. Anil said:

“how does MovableType handle the “template” thing?”

I work for Six Apart (which makes MT) so I thought I’d take a crack at an answer, too. Movable Type uses templates which are basically just standard (X)HTML, with specific tags for things like your post titles or dates, and these are filled out when publishing, kind of like a mail merge. The templates don’t have any scripting in them, unless you choose to have them do so, which helps keep application logic and output separated, and also makes a lot of adminstrators happy, if they want to make sure that pages that include user-submitted content don’t have to have scripting permissions on the web server.

All of the positioning and formatting is defined by CSS. You can just swap in a single CSS file and change the entire look and feel of the site, again without having to edit any scripts or modifying the templates. Most people who do more complex sites choose to layout their pages first, and then insert the appropriate MT tags to inject their content where appropriate. This can be done with Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive, as well, for people who like to start their designs in a visual editor.

Finally, MT renders the pages from the templates. Though it’s best known for outputting static pages by default (to accommodate sites which scale to high volumes of traffic), MT can also use its dynamic PHP-based templating system, which eliminates the need rebuilds and lets you use standard Smarty plugins in your templates.

Many of the personal users (as in, non-business users) of MT are using a combination of these techniques now, opting for static pages for things like XML feeds which are requested a lot, and dynamic pages for individual posts, giving a good balance of responsiveness while publishing while reducing server demand under load.

Posted on May 27, 2005 11:12 AM | #

44. Lorenzo said:

i attribute the lack of originality and widespread use of ready-made themes such as kubrick to the lack of techical knowledge on the part of the average drupal user.

think about it: the main reason developers turn to drupal in the first place is that it’s a free, modulated wheel that they don’t have to reinvent. the mentality will naturally carry across to the choice and implementation of themes.

until the admin interface allows for easier customisation of templates, original development will lie in the hands of power users like mr. heilemann.

btw. thanks mike: i used the kubrick wordpress theme myself for my recent travel blog and it was a real pleasure to customise!

Posted on July 12, 2005 03:34 AM | #

46. approaching said:

http://www.periodismocivicocba.org/wwwboard/messages/2372.html garyhoodlumnow

Posted on February 5, 2006 07:28 AM | #

48. links said:

http://www.mwpcsociety.org/current_events/messages/35308.html complimentwhosewondered

Posted on May 31, 2006 08:31 PM | #