Otto, thanks for your thoughtful comment.

Re: title filter. That would be another way of doing it, although I think it’s already way too much of a PHP & HTML soup in one boul. And that big ass functions.php file is also a problem which should be addressed.

Re: HTML5. So you think it would be better to specify another doctype?

Re: p vs. div. I think h1 and h2 should never be used for site title and description (the only exception could be the front page, although I don’t see enough semantic reasoning for that either).

Re: Widgets as lists. We’ll have to disagree on this one. I really don’t see how widgets that are in no way related to each other must be linked together in a list. In addition, no block elements are allowed inside list-item (which is neither an inline nor a block type element).

Re: function_exists. To me this sounds like a goto solution to a bigger problem.

Re: comment input field order. I prefer to put the most important stuff first and I don’t understand why others do it the other way around. However, you raise an even more important problem with comment input validation — that blank page with “Please fill in all required fields” and the need for back button is a huge usability issue.

Again, thanks for your comment.