[theme-reviewers] Child themes

[Simon Prosser]

On Wednesday 25 August 2010 09:38:05 Otto wrote:
> i! I'm new to the theme-reviewers list. I went through the archives a
> bit, but that's trickier than it sounds. ;)
> 
> Could somebody explain to me the specific problems with allowing child
> themes? What is currently broken about the process or tools or
> whatever that is blocking this from happening?
Welcome to the list Otto!

Here are my views on child themes:

Firstly the uploader, currently it checks that certain functions are in place 
wp_head() wp_footer() are where they should be and various other stuff, i'm not 
too sure of the full list anyway.. a child theme can simply consist of 1 file, 
style.css so that renders the uploader useless as 99% of child themes will 
fail straight away, new upload that checks for a child theme then disables all 
checks .. maybe?

secondly how do we check a child theme? do we have to check the parent theme 
as well?  How old is the parent theme? What are the minimum requirements for a 
child theme? just a style.css with a div replacing the footer with some seo 
links? im sure it wont take long for them to figure that out ;)

The upload would need to be changed a lot, also the theme listing pages would 
have to list the parent theme, maybe some kind of automatic email thing that 
informed the child theme author when the parent theme has been updated, so he 
can check if the child theme still works properly.

I love the idea of child themes, i use them myself, i wrote one a while ago 
and was really happy with it, but i had to rewrite includeing the parent theme 
to make it eligable for submission to the directory.
-- 
MyBlog : http://www.pross.org.uk/
Plugins : http://www.pross.org.uk/plugins/
Themes: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/profile/pross
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