Templating systems (HTML::Template, MovableType’s template system, or Smarty Templates — soon to be a part of WordPress) are a good thing. They separate out the programming logic and hide it from the user. Most users don’t want to stare at a mess of PHP (or Perl or Python or …) code whenever they want to make some simple change to their blog.
That’s not to say that there’s no learning curve associated to using a template system. But it’s much shallower than learning a programming language. And it’s much less fragile than dealing with a bunch of “gobbledygook” in a programming language that one doesn’t know. [I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of that first PHP program they copied and pasted in a text editor and — after saving the result — encountered some mystifying error because their text editor had silently inserted a space after the final “?<“.]
And comparing plugins (where the user never has to look at the source code) to having your hand held through hacking the source code is, to be blunt, no comparison.
WordPress has plugins, now. It will have Smarty Templates sometime soon. And then it will be palatable to people who “really don’t want to learn PHP.” In the meantime, it doesn’t do to belittle people who are intimidated by having to stare at PHP code to modify their blog.
I gotta say that I disagree rather strongly.
Templating systems (HTML::Template, MovableType’s template system, or Smarty Templates — soon to be a part of WordPress) are a good thing. They separate out the programming logic and hide it from the user. Most users don’t want to stare at a mess of PHP (or Perl or Python or …) code whenever they want to make some simple change to their blog.
That’s not to say that there’s no learning curve associated to using a template system. But it’s much shallower than learning a programming language. And it’s much less fragile than dealing with a bunch of “gobbledygook” in a programming language that one doesn’t know. [I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of that first PHP program they copied and pasted in a text editor and — after saving the result — encountered some mystifying error because their text editor had silently inserted a space after the final “?<“.]
And comparing plugins (where the user never has to look at the source code) to having your hand held through hacking the source code is, to be blunt, no comparison.
WordPress has plugins, now. It will have Smarty Templates sometime soon. And then it will be palatable to people who “really don’t want to learn PHP.” In the meantime, it doesn’t do to belittle people who are intimidated by having to stare at PHP code to modify their blog.
Smarty templates will most likely not be incorporated into WordPress, for a myriad of reasons that have been discussed ad nauseum.
I stand corrected. Sorry.
And that was a “?>” not a “?<“.