Thinking Outside the Box
WordPress Themes have been around for a long while, but until very recently, many themes have been simple blog layouts and an extra page template here and there. However, there has been an increasing trend, arguably started by premium themes, where nifty uses of WP’s functions have allowed for unique features and more in themes.
Custom Loops
Custom Loops is probably the most significant of these changes. By letting the user put all their testimonials in one category, you could hide them from the main post display, then run a custom loop somewhere else on the page to display just the testimonials.
An easy way of doing this would be to run the query_posts function choosing only posts from one category, or even pulling a single, random post. Then run a loop like normal, and the post would be displayed.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields are also something which, until recently, seem to have been underused. It’s easy to get a custom field for a post inside your loop, just use the get_post_meta function and you’re good to go.
These have been used for image resizers, video embedding code and even changing the URLs for people reading your RSS feed.
Theme Options Page
Theme Options pages are becoming popular in free themes as well as premium ones now. Aimed towards users who don’t want to dive into their theme’s code, they can help setup a theme and more. These are more complicated pieces of code, but it proves they can be done.
It’s Not A Post!
The whole idea of a post being a couple of paragraphs of text has become less specific, with a post now being considered more of an abstract concept for a piece of content – videos, mini-updates and a lot more. The success of WordPress in part can be attributed to its extremely flexible themes system as that is what has pushed the boundaries of the software and let it become flexible.
This is ultimately the thinking outside of the box which many themes are heading to, and it will be interesting to see what new ideas and techniques are going to be used in the future.