Semiologic theme and CMS, v2 released

In resources — I've uploaded the latest version of my CMS theme. Changes since the first version are numerous. And I would add, temporary. In short:

• I've internationalized a little bit, adding the main phrases on the site in the appropriate WordPress wrappers — but I doubt this will be very relevant
• I'm using my set of tiles (see below), rather than WordPress template tags
• The canvas changed a tiny bit: I've made it a little wider, I've removed the numbering of comments, and my two '(not-so) sponsored links' will no longer display on your site by default.

The theme is hardly customizable in its current state, which is why I'm calling this state temporary. Hardly means you can customize the overall canvas and the CSS — and you are welcome to submit your changes for inclusion as variations of the theme. But much about everything else (e.g. how to display an individual post or a comment) is in rigidly defined, quick and dirty tiles.

Having WordPress generate a page on your blog should make the structure very clear if you feel like toying with HTML and CSS. A few areas are predefined in the canvas and referenced using id attributes. In the main division, headers and body are identified accordingly using classes. The tile elements are well structured. And the CSS files are hopefully easy to customize.

The next version of the theme should feature a few strategically placed, theme-specific hooks in the canvas via the tiles and in sidebar.php (which may become a tile in itself). This would be for me and other plugin developers to use as locations to insert new features. These will enable the average Joe user to add features to his web site in one click. One of these plugins will let you add customized notes to your sidebar by creating a page called sidebar — odds are strong I'll make this one available quickly.

I'll be reworking the tiles in the month to come. I've released the theme in its current state in spite of their being unfinished, because I feel the core canvas is sufficiently stabilized for others to use the theme without fearing to see their work squished entirely after upgrading their theme. The target is to make upgrading the theme a painless affair, and this upgrade makes this — almost — possible. Almost, as in I've still a few issues to solve, but we're getting there steadily.

The next version of the tiles should feature arguments, like my fuzzy recent plugins. This will bring back the customizability from the original wordpress tiles, but in a much more powerful way. The planned arguments for the tiles are consistent with those of my fuzzy recent plugins: Captions (e.g. 'Posted on %date%'), for use with the default HTML, a 'display=xml', which will make the tiles spit XML at your option, and a 'xslt=filename', which will let a web designer use the tile to spit whichever HTML he wants.