[theme-reviewers] A RE-EXAMINATION OF THEME REQUIREMENTS - AN ESSAY

[Chip Bennett]

Replies inline.

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Bruce Wampler <brucewampler at gmail.com>wrote:

> GRANDFATHERING EXISTING THEMES - NEW POINT
>
> One more important argument for grandfathering themes, pointed out to me by
> one of
> my thousands of users:
>
> For the many many thousands of users of existing themes, it is critical to
> allow them to
> be updated. One of the most important things for users is the theme they
> use. Being
> forced to change themes because it is not being updated is one of the most
> traumatic experiences a typical WordPress user can face.
>

Agreed here. The user experience degrades significantly the longer a Theme
goes without being updated, while WordPress continues to evolve.

>
> It is beyond doubt that the new, very restrictive submission rules


There is nothing new. There is nothing particularly restrictive. Can you
provide counter-examples?


> will prevent a large
> number of existing theme authors from updating their themes.


There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from
submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples?


> Thus, strictly from
> the end user's stand point, it is unfair, even devastating to prevent


There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from
submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples?


> long existing themes
> from submitting updates or to be forced into extensive re-writes to meet
> the newest
> requirements.


Quite frankly, some Themes *need* extensive re-writes - that is, unless you
think that end users remain best-served by using one of the myriad
Kubrick-based Themes extant in the Repository - Themes that don't support
custom Menus, threaded/paged comments, Widgets, etc.?


> And unless I totally misunderstand the point of WordPress coders,
> plugin authors, and theme authors, the reason we are all here is to provide
> a great
> free web building tool for people all over the world.
>
> So, I repeat my suggestion that there be a fairly liberal update policy for
> previously
> approved themes - perhaps requiring only support for the most important new
> features
> of new versions of WP (such as the 3.0 custom menus), or provably severe
> security
> issues (such as nonce).


What requirements, specifically, would you *exclude* from such
"grandfathered" Themes?


> Otherwise, thousands upon thousands of WP users are likely
> to be negatively affected as more and more theme authors are unable to
> modify
> their themes to meet the latest requirements of the month.


Let's be honest: thousands upon thousands of WP users are *already*
negatively impacted, because they are using Themes that have been in the
Repository for 2 or 3 years without a single update. The primary problem
isn't Themes submitted by developers who attempt to keep their Themes
updated, but rather the Themes submitted once and then abandoned.

And can you please stop with the "latest requirements of the month"
assertions? They are utterly specious, and unproductive. Again, here is the
revision history of the Theme Review
Guidelines<http://codex.wordpress.org/index.php?title=Theme_Review&action=history>
-
editorial changes, and all. Does it really look like it's being changed as
frequently as you keep asserting?


> The fact that many of
> the newest requirements have only been enforced since March


NO. FULLSTOP.

Those requirements were enforced BEFORE March, just as they were enforced
AFTER March. The only change was that the uploader script started rejecting
Themes on ALREADY EXISTING, required issues.

Here is the full list of actual changes in
March<http://make.wordpress.org/themes/guidelines/changes-wp-3-1/>(one
month after release of WordPress 3.1). We established some guidelines
for handling of Post Formats (new in WP 3.1), and finalized some other
guidelines that had been under "draft" consideration for months. We started
requiring the License header tags, required Themes not to use TimThumb (with
an allowance for case-by-case consideration), explicitly called out that
"Upsell" Themes may be subject to additional scrutiny, and established some
guidelines for handling of favicons.

Now, as far as I can tell, not a bit of that impacted your Theme.


> likely indicates the
> fact that I'm having such difficulties updating my previously approved
> theme is only
> the leading edge of a big issue.
>
> Again: your experience is atypical. There are not that many Themes doing
anything extensive enough to necessitate using file operations such as
fopen().

To be sure: we've had our fair share of issues, and caused frustration for
developers. But, to my knowledge, *most* of those issues have been addressed
and resolved.

Chip
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