WP Framework is a blank Word Press(WP) theme that you can use to easily setup a your own theme for your WP blog. When I started this blog I debated whether or not I wanted to spend the time putting together my own theme – do I want to spend time CSS-ing or writing? In the end I figured to give it a shot thinking that at the very least I would get a little more familiar with this blogging software.

I started by fiddling around with the default WP theme but found the results to similar to a well dressed plate having its mashed potatoes with gravy swapped out for rice – things were looking messy. So I googled around a bit and came across the concept of WP “theme frameworks”. These are basically pre-baked vanilla cakes ready for their icing to be added.

After downloading a few and taking a very quick look around I decided to give WP Framework a shot. It seemed to provide the most functional starting position without getting in the way. So a few pleasent hours later here I am with my custom theme. Thanks WP Framework.

One thing I did trip over (this isn’t directly related to WP Framework itself) was the ability to add a “home” link to the navigation bar at the top of the page. I confess to not having read any of the WP or WP Framework documentation so I cannot say whether or not it mentions how to do this (my guess is that it does). But for those of you who, like me, tend to skip the docs here is the solution (at least for WP 2.7):

There is a PHP method wp_page_menu( $args = array() ) in wp-includes/post-template.php which is used to create the navigation links. This method checks the $args array for an option called show_home. If specified it uses this option’s value for the text of the home page link and if it is not specified (the default) no home page link is displayed.

For this blog I’m calling that method using:

wp_page_menu( array('show_home'=>'Blog', 'menu_class'=>'nav') );

I hope this first peak into my box has been useful to you.