Spent a rather large time today working on my Simple Notes theme for websites. Still has a few rough edges, like not embedding the fonts and some interface quirks, but otherwise it looks pretty good.

It is frustrating doing website themes. Right now, I use WordPress, DokuWiki, MantisBT, and Simple Machines Forum. Each of these has an entirely different way of skinning their application but I want each of them to have a common “look and feel” with the least amount of work. But, things don’t work that way. If I really wanted a nice, consistent look and feel, I pretty much have to do the same theme five or six times. One for each application and also my initial static page.

Call it the programmer in me, but I hate repeating code. I keep looking for a library or platform or framework where I can create this theme one and have it applied to everything. But, instead I’m struggling with using a metaphysical crowbar to jam everything together, copying code over and over. Which makes it a nightmare when I realize I missed something and have to copy that fix across six different versions.

While working on Rough Blue, I started created a PHP template library that worked across all those applications. It is still rough, but every time I hit a road block, I look for some other smarter person who already did it.

Haven’t found that person. Or that library.

Oh well, I’m happy with it so far. If I keep using my WTF library (or figure out how to get client-side XSLT to work without crashing Firefox), I might see if it can help someone else.