I found that the longest part of a plugin or theme development is creating the options panel, at least in my case.
So i like to know what’s your take on that.
Do you use a ready made framework or class? And if so witch one?
Or do you write it up from scratch? Use the settings API or plain options?
Thanks.
OK so found some more:
JeffreyWay /
WordPress-Theme-Options-Page –
open source class the project is hosted on github aimed at theme developers,
looks nice, haven’t used it. (link dead)
.
devinsays / Options-Framework –
open source Framework the project is
hosted on github aimed at theme
developers , i later learned that is
has evolved in to
Thematic-options very large
scaled project that has lots of
features. (link dead)
helgatheviking /
thematic-options-KIA – open
source Framework the project is
hosted on github aimed at help
developers build options into their
thematic child themes , witch was
forked for Thematic-options very much
up to date.(link dead)
WordPress AdminPage Class – a
commercial solution, packed it
features and very easy to use.
OptionTree plugin – and IDE for
creating option panels , lots of
feature and constantly updated,
downside is: it’s not easily
integrated in plugins or themes and
default options are not an option (up
to version 1.1.1).
that’s it for now but still looking to here about your experience.
Update
After a long time of trying I’ve managed to integrate Options tree with my plugin and after that part was done , I have to say that its never been easier to add options to my plugin, EVER! all done with no code, but using the slick UI that comes with it.
So as of now its my favorite with a small exception of being a plugin by it self and not a framework witch makes the integration part a lot harder.
Update2
If you read the first update then this will be 180 degree turn, i have stopped using Option-Tree witch was hard to integrate in the first place but mainly for the reason that it create an option row in the options database table for each option you add to it so my plugin has created 287 rows in the database and thats bad for many reasons but the main ones are its hard to remove all of them at plugin deactivation and you have to create a get-option call for each one of them so that’s a lot of database calls.
Since that little set back,I found that most of the frameworks listed up here work in the same manner of each option gets its own row.
So i modified AdminPage Class to save all options per admin page in an array of options and and now my plugin only generates 7 Rows in the database and at most i only need to call the get_option function 7 times so that saves lots of database calls, I’ll contact the creator of AdminPage Class and ask him to consider this modification but other then that it very easy to use and even easier to manage.
Last Update
if anyone is still keeping score here, then i ended up coding my own
option panel classwhich it’s main features are:
scbFramework has related classes, I used it for one plugin and it saved me plenty of time;
WPAlchemy MetaBox I see a lot of mentions for this around, hadn’t used it myself yet;
Hybrid Core has set of functions for pages/metaboxes/settings, but it probably won’t make sense to use it just for that.
The UpThemes team has just released their options framework as an opensource for everyone. It worth to take a look.
I had been using this , I liked how it outputs a iframe preview, but I started to just write my own since I’m figuring this stuff out.
http://clark-technet.com/2010/01/wordpress-theme-options-framework-ver-2
The devinsays Options-Framework has now evolved more, into the Options Framework Plugin/Options Framework Theme.
This is beautiful and user-friendly, and there is documentation about including it right in your theme code. However, if you wanted to incorporate it into a plugin, that would take some work.
I think we can add Infinity Theme Anti-Framework to this list. http://infinity.presscrew.com/