Comments on: Thesis hooks. A complete newbies guide

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:44:01 +0000

I love it when people think I’m right! Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it rules! Thanks for the comments.

By: Alderete

Alderete — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:34:32 +0000

I’m with Dave, the OpenHook plugin was nice when you couldn’t edit custom_functions.php via the web interface, but now that you can, it’s more of a crutch than a tool. If you’re going to customize Thesis via hooks, you really ought to learn the built-in, standard, fully-supported way to do so: custom_functions.php.

Putting your customizations into custom_functions.php, rather than OpenHook, has two big advantages:

– Your customizations are stored in the theme, in the thesis/custom folder. You can take them with you to a new blog just by copying the directory. They are easy to back up. They are easy to put under version control. If you use OpenHook, you have to [remember to] copy/paste from a bunch of web form fields into other web form fields on a new site. Not as simple. It’s harder to back up your customizations. And forget about version control.

- OpenHook stores your hook insertions in the database. Which means it adds extra database queries, for every page view. Which means a performance hit. ‘Nuf said.
Alderete´s last blog ..Applying Thesis styles in print

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:55:30 +0000

That’s a really good point. Openhook is great as a free plugin. It’s worth every penny. But after it managed to lose my data twice, I’m very wary.

I also dislike the fact that Openhook doesn’t store (as far as I know) your custom functions in Thesis’ custom_functions.php file. So if you have to move your theme from one server to another (which I do A LOT) you’re constantly having to copy/paste code. I also tend to disagree with your ‘hack-hack’ statement. In my opinion, adding code to the custom_functions.php file is the clean, proper way to work. Using Openhook is the hack.

In summary I think it’s an awesome plugin, but I wouldn’t trust it on commercial projects.

By: Ramses

Ramses — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:40:10 +0000

Came here from twitter.com – Indeed a very clean customization you got here

But why don’t we all just use the OpenHook Plugin? No custom functions hack-hack needed anymore.
Ramses´s last blog ..Thesis Theme Marriage – Divorce Finally Legal

By: (Anti) Social Lists 11/15/09 | (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 11/15/09 | (Anti) Social Development — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:03:18 +0000

[...] Thesis Hooks Guide – A great guide to Thesis Hooks by Dave Wilkinson. [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:19:47 +0000

Thanks Kim. That’s exactly how I feel. When I first started using Thesis hooks scared me off. Then the penny dropped. Now I think they’re awesome and I want to have their babies. OK, maybe the Wilkinsons’ have enough babies for the time being, but you know what I mean…