First of all I love the arras theme, but it really lacks just a few features that would make it SO much better and suitable for a larger audience. I think this theme has way more potential than "suffusion" for example because this theme isn't overloaded with features like suffusion is. Less is more, and that's why I love arras. That being said, I do think there are some things missing that would make a huge difference. The only problem with adding features is that it will make the theme more heavy as well. I rather have less features added in an x amount of time to make sure the theme stays light than have a whole bunch of them added in a short time but not being able to turn them off completely. Features should not affect the server load while not being used.

Below my 2 cents of desperately needed features.

Managing ADVERTISEMENTS
-Leaderboard in header ( to finally use that huge empty space, sigh. )
-banners/leaderboards between slideshow and featured 1/ featured 2/archive
-center the ads ( example: right now I have an ad in my "footer 1" aligned to the left, and it's impossible to center. )

Tabbed sidebar WIDGETS
- Nice tabbed sidebar, but why no support for widgets?
- Why can't I turn some features off. I can only configure the order now.

Theme OPTIMIZATION
- I'm not using the slideshow, why is it being loaded?
- I'm not using the tabbed sidebar, why is it being loaded?
- When features like the slideshow are disabled, why load the javascript/php code etc? Arras needs more optimizing for sites with a huge amount of visitors to reduce server load. When options are turned off, they shouldn't be loaded.

Some more FUNKY FEATURES
-Like the amount of comments shown in the nodes, quick preview etc., why not show the amount of "hits/clicks" as well? Saw this on a customized version of Arras somewhere on this forum, looked really neat.
- The ability to link a post directly to an external website. If you have a large website, you know how important it is to send traffic to other websites in order to receive traffic back. I managed with some custom field tweaks to link posts directly to another website ( and make them open in a new window ). When the user clicks a post thumbnail, title or read more they'll go directly to the external page.
- Comment Form Quicktags
- Comment Reply Notification. If users want to be notified of follow-up comments, let them!
- Full Width POSTS. Now it's done with a plugin and some tweaks, but this should be in the theme as well.
- Online Users Widget- Guests - Logged In Users - Total Amount of Members.
- Light version of arras for mobile phones. Yeah, the mobile phone industry is taking over the internet. Arras is very heavy for mobile phones, therefore a light version would be very neat.

Thanks for reading all my idiotic ideas. 

Last edited by numaga (2011-02-15 05:52:34)