[theme-reviewers] Bundling Plugins

[Shawn Grundy]

This is kind of a tough one. On one hand, I would love to see themes that take advantage of custom post types in certain situations, because it provides tremendous opportunity for creativity and allows more "niche" themes that are built for specific purposes or markets to be openly accessible, however, custom post types typically rely on custom meta boxes and fields for specific information and if a user happens to switch themes, that data will most likely not be displayed correctly, such as for a "product" post type as an example. 
That being said, however, there are custom post type plugins that could be supported by the theme, which would then go back to original topic. A user would still have to add the style for a custom post type if they switch themes to one that does not support the plugin natively, but at least they wouldn't have to re-create the post type in the new theme. 
So I would agree with Chip here. Custom post types, though it would seem, in most instances, be a feature that *should* be handled by a theme, the best bet in the interest of maximum compatibility would be to add style and support for the post types within the theme, and allow a plugin to extend the theme. Again, IMO.

Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 10:47:17 -0500
From: chip at chipbennett.net
To: theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Bundling Plugins

Themes intended for general, public distribution shouldn't be *implementing* Custom Post Types, IMHO. Custom Post Types create content, and content should maintain portability among Themes, and there is simply no good way to ensure that Theme-to-Theme naming of CPTs will be consistent.

I like the idea of support for "Supported Plugins", and any functional implementation that could be built around it. That's probably a very long-term goal, though.
Chip


On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:20 AM, Doug Stewart <zamoose at gmail.com> wrote:



Chip:

What about Custom Post Types? If your theme implements any CPT

functionality, it steps directly on that bright line.



There ought to be a method for some sort of "Supports Plugins:" header

tags for themes so that, as a theme installation step, an end user

could specify "Download and activate all plugins marked as 'supported'

in this current theme."





--

-Doug

@zamoose

http://literalbarrage.org/blog/

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