The Carrington Framework Q&A, Part II

Who should use the Carrington framework?

It really depends on the needs of your site/theme. Carrington is all about making it easy for you to build the custom design and features needed for a specific site and set of content. If you look at the features of the Carrington framework and think “why would someone need that?”, then it probably isn’t for you.

Remember, WordPress can power more than just a blog – many of us use WordPress to build complex CMS web sites with a vast collection of sections, archives and content types. Most of the time when I describe how Carrington works to a fellow WordPress developer that builds rich CMS sites, they nod emphatically and “get it” right away.

Conversely, there are some folks who don’t see the need for the features provided by the Carrington framework. My guess is that if these people joined us at Crowd Favorite to help build one of our standard sites, they’d have a different view of the value of Carrington.

Once you understand how Carrington works, you may want to use it even if you’re just building a very simple blog or web site. It isn’t harder than any other theme techniques and provides for much greater flexibility for the future.

There is a learning curve. Carrington introduces new concepts and features to WordPress themes. If you don’t want/need the customization ability provided by Carrington, it may not be the best option for you.

How do I create a child theme from Carrington JAM?

This is actually the wrong question. You don’t create a child theme from Carrington JAM because Carrington JAM isn’t a parent theme. JAM is a Carrington file and folder skeleton to help you easily get started using the concepts in the Carrington framework so you can create a theme of your own.

Remember, Carrington is a real framework like Rails for Ruby and Django for Python. The theme you create from Carrington JAM is your own theme, just like the application you build with Ruby on Rails is your own application.

If I really want to can I create a child theme for Carrington Blog/Text/Mobile?

Yes, any theme in WordPress can be a parent theme. You can read a tutorial about how to do this here. There are some limitations of how parent themes work in WordPress, so those are also shared by Carrington themes.

I think it would be great if someone would like to take an in-depth look at creating child themes from Carrington and created an FAQ/tutorial. Please let me know if you create one.

If it turns out some changes are needed to Carrington, we’ll certainly consider them.

How do I upgrade the theme I built on Carrington?

Like any good development framework, the framework is separate from the product itself. The Carrington framework resides in the carrington-core directory and can be upgraded separately from the rest of your Carrington-based theme when a new version of the core Carrington framework is available.

With all of the template files, how do I tell what is getting loaded from where?

Carrington includes a function to show the file location of each included file. Simply open up the functions.php file in your editor and change this code:

define('CFCT_DEBUG', false);

to:

define('CFCT_DEBUG', true);

and you will see file paths appear all throughout the theme. This makes it very easy to see what part of the theme is comprised of which template(s).

Can I use just part of Carrington?

Absolutely. Remember, Carrington is a 100% additive framework. You can bring in Carrington for just your site header, just post content, comments, etc. All you have to do is create the appropriate folder and file combinations where you want to use Carrington, and call the appropriate function (cfct_header(), cfct_content(), etc.) to invoke Carrington’s selection of a template from that folder.

How do I use a custom taxonomy with Carrington?

It’s common to use custom taxonomies when creating advanced CMS web sites. Carrington doesn’t try to guess your intentions with a custom taxonomy, instead you can teach it about your taxonomy.

Create functions that check for the named templates that you want to use with your custom taxonomy, then use the appropriate filters to add your function into the template selection used by Carrington. You can use the existing functions that work with tags as a guide.

How do I do XYZ in Carrington?

It obviously depends on what XYZ is, but it’s likely that you’d do it the way you would in any other theme. Since Carrington is a 100% additive framework, the standard way of doing anything in a WordPress theme should work just fine. The areas in which you can take advantage of additional Carrington functionality are around conditional presentation and display of content, data, etc.

I find Carrington compelling, but I’m having trouble getting started – how can I get help?

I recommend reading the documentation linked on the Developers page on this site, and the README files in each directory in our Carrington themes and participating community support forums. Hopefully this information will be enough to get people going in most situations.

If you need additional help, you can also call the WordPress HelpCenter and they can answer most Carrington questions you may have. Crowd Favorite also provides commercial Carrington consulting and support (generally needs to be scheduled about 3-5 days in advance).

I think I found a bug in Carrington, what do I do?

Bug reports are best added to the Issue tracker at Google Code. If you’re not sure it’s a bug you may want to discuss the issue in the forums first to confirm.

If the bug is security related, please contact us directly instead of posting it publicly.