I’ve seen this conversation pop up before, but at what point do theme options go overboard and become more confusing than helpful? Don’t get me wrong, I am all for adding options and overall making it easier for the end user to control the output of a theme, but
I recently came across a theme which to be completely honest was extremely confusing and I thought I had seen it all at this point. It’s not that it wasn’t structurally sound. There was some thought put into the front end of the site, at least it was logical. The confusion started when you dove into the backend and had a look at the options, the very controls that some theme authors put into place in order to make the life of the end user just a tad easier. There were so many options here it was overwhelming, but it wasn’t just the number of options alone.
Rather than focusing on what might actually be useful to the end user I believe the developer set out with one thought in mind. I am going to develop a theme. Since all of the themes that get attention these days come with options I need to have options to make this good. So I’ll surprise them. Here’s an option for everything!”
Two things really irked me here.
- I couldn’t seem to figure out a reason for adding so many “down to the pixel” options in this theme with no apparent reason other than to say “look at me I have options”. It was confusing and overwhelming as I stated above and I deal with WordPress on a daily, imagine how your typical user would feel upon installation.
- Second thing, and I think this is the one that really got me. There was no logical layout or sequence to the options. Sure they were organized in subheadings which for the most part made sense but once you got past that point it was an array of things you could choose to control, some of which I would see no reason for and others which made some sense. If you are going to add options to a theme, at least take the time to think about how the end user is going to interact with these options, what are the logical steps that they will take when setting up the theme. Think about form or navigation design, there is a natural sense of order that you try to follow, something that the end user is familiar with or becomes familiar with rather quickly.
As I dug deeper the confusion worsened. While it seemed that you could control everything under the sun, there where little things that seemed quite a bit more useful and obvious that had been left out. The kicker was, in order to use some of the options in a particular manner you needed to tackle these little things first. Which meant digging into the code anyway. Kind of starts to defeat the purpose.
Personally I tend to go with minimal options. I think about the actions almost all users will take when setting up a theme. The basics, things like stats tracking codes, feedburner url’s etc. Things that might change often, for example a client would like to include a daily quote of their choosing. I have to possible routes of action here, I build in a widget area in which they can easily insert a text widget or I include a text area in the options panel. Simple and non confusing.
I will say this There are themes out there that contain quite a few options, giving a novice end user quite a bit of control over both the basics and the design. The thing that sets these themes apart is the fact that the developer has obviously put careful thought into which options make sense to include and the logical manner in which they are presented to the user. These themes with all of their options in tow can be set up by a novice user with only little more time spent when compared to your average theme, sans options. These themes are doing it right.
As for the theme mentioned above, it seems to me that if an end user does in fact end up having to search out support in order to figure out all of the options you are presenting them with, that the purpose of including those options has been defeated entirely.
I suppose this is more of a rant but I would be interested to hear your experiences with theme options and your opinion on their usefulness.