Lately I've been tinkering with the Hybrid theme by Justin Tadlock. I'm still undecided about which parent/child framework I may standardize. I like your Thematic Theme Options Panel article, that's a great idea. I almost see it as an area to define a "global custom field". Have you ever tried adding advanced fields in there, like a WYSIWYG?

I'm still a little turned off to the idea of using hooks and filters to edit XHTML code via PHP. I do a lot of customized CMS setups, and it's much quicker and easier to process if you just edit the XHTML code itself. I know the whole stigma behind keeping things independent of upgrades, but I haven't quite decided if it's worth all the extra effort.

Thanks again for the input, and keep up the nice work on your blog!

I'm not sure if you decided to stick with the Thematic Framework, but I've been doing about 80% of my development with it and love using it. My approach was to build a few base child themes that I'll use for different projects. For instance, if I need to build a site with a lot of theme options, I'll use this base child theme I developed.

A lot of the css and functions code also gets re-used from project to project. I've been posting a lot of my more useful filters. I'd be curious if you have any to add.

I'm excited to here this as it's exactly what I've been looking for. The whole concept of using hooks in my themes is very appealing to me as well.

Perhaps other frameworks are better for people not wanting to really dig in and do something – those would be better off with straight foreward theme control panel.