Multi-instance Widgets

There was a thread today on Wp-Hackers regarding multi-instance widgets.  While I don’t need this right now, I was curious because I expect to do something with widgets for my wp-SwimTeam plugin.  If and when I do, I want to make sure I don’t design myself into a corner.

The discussion referenced an interesting article which outlines how to develop a widget to ensure it will support multi-instances.

Theme Frameworks

I want to use a theme framework to develop a couple themes.  Why do I want to do this?  Because I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.  There are several to choose from or I could write my own.  I really don’t want to write my own.

Frameworks

I am sure there are more but these are the ones I have looked at.  I had pretty much settled on Sandbox as I found it easy to work with and there was some discussion a while ago about including it as part of WordPress.  I was a bit concerned that it hadn’t been updated since last summer but thought "hey, maybe it is done”.  So I started playing around with it for my LEGO Blog.  What is there now is very much a work in progress.  I got it working enough that I could see where I was going.

Then I saw this:  http://www.plaintxt.org/2009/01/looking-for-a-wordpress-brand/

Uh-oh.  What is the future of Sandbox?  I posed a question on the Wp-Hackers mailing list but the thread went wildly off track and it was  never answered.  The comments on the announcement indicate that it might end up as part of WordPress but other than that, I haven’t seen any other mention of it anywhere.

I am reluctant to invest more time in a Sandbox based theme until I know where it is headed.  I guess I’ll go back and look at the others again.  I really like the idea of child themes so I want to explore this some more before giving up.