Replies inline.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Bruce Wampler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brucewampler@gmail.com">brucewampler@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
GRANDFATHERING EXISTING THEMES - NEW POINT<br>
<br>
One more important argument for grandfathering themes, pointed out to me by one of<br>
my thousands of users:<br>
<br>
For the many many thousands of users of existing themes, it is critical to allow them to<br>
be updated. One of the most important things for users is the theme they use. Being<br>
forced to change themes because it is not being updated is one of the most<br>
traumatic experiences a typical WordPress user can face.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Agreed here. The user experience degrades significantly the longer a Theme goes without being updated, while WordPress continues to evolve. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
It is beyond doubt that the new, very restrictive submission rules </blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is nothing new. There is nothing particularly restrictive. Can you provide counter-examples?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
will prevent a large<br>
number of existing theme authors from updating their themes. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Thus, strictly from<br>
the end user's stand point, it is unfair, even devastating to prevent</blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> long existing themes<br>
from submitting updates or to be forced into extensive re-writes to meet the newest<br>
requirements. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">And unless I totally misunderstand the point of WordPress coders,<br>
plugin authors, and theme authors, the reason we are all here is to provide a great<br>
free web building tool for people all over the world.<br>
<br>
So, I repeat my suggestion that there be a fairly liberal update policy for previously<br>
approved themes - perhaps requiring only support for the most important new features<br>
of new versions of WP (such as the 3.0 custom menus), or provably severe security<br>
issues (such as nonce). </blockquote><div><br></div><div>What requirements, specifically, would you *exclude* from such "grandfathered" Themes?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Otherwise, thousands upon thousands of WP users are likely<br>
to be negatively affected as more and more theme authors are unable to modify<br>
their themes to meet the latest requirements of the month. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>And can you please stop with the "latest requirements of the month" assertions? They are utterly specious, and unproductive. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/index.php?title=Theme_Review&action=history">Again, here is the revision history of the Theme Review Guidelines</a> - editorial changes, and all. Does it really look like it's being changed as frequently as you keep asserting?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">The fact that many of<br>
the newest requirements have only been enforced since March</blockquote><div><br></div><div>NO. FULLSTOP. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div><a href="http://make.wordpress.org/themes/guidelines/changes-wp-3-1/">Here is the full list of actual changes in March</a> (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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Now, as far as I can tell, not a bit of that impacted your Theme.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> likely indicates the<br>
fact that I'm having such difficulties updating my previously approved theme is only<br>
the leading edge of a big issue.<div class="im"><br></div></blockquote><div>Again: your experience is atypical. There are not that many Themes doing anything extensive enough to necessitate using file operations such as fopen().</div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Chip</div>
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