[theme-reviewers] Child themes

[Doug Stewart]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Joseph Scott <joseph at automattic.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 2:38 AM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:
> > 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?
>
> There's also a general WP problem with child themes in the WPORG repo.
>  Theme authors recommend that users modify themes via the creation of
> a child theme, which make sense, keeps the changes in one place and
> hopefully upgrades go smoother.  However, if the theme is already a
> child theme, now we are talking about recommending grand child themes,
> which I don't believe work with WP yet.  So a user is left modifying
> the original child theme they installed and likely loosing those
> modifications each time they upgrade.  They will quickly learn to stop
> upgrading, which is not something we want.
>
> So there are issues that are WPORG repo/process related and other
> issues that are core WP specific.
>
>
>
(Maybe this might be more appropriate for  wp-hackers, but I figured I'd
toss it out here first)

Question:
Why not supplement the Template: CSS tag with a URI? Point it to the parent
on the Org for those hosted there or to an external source for those not
hosted there? Then, if a child theme is installed and the local copy of the
parent doesn't exist, WP can go and fetch it from the appropriate place.

Obviously, any child themes hosted on the Org would have to have parents
also in the Org, as we couldn't credibly point to third party sites whose
contents can't be guaranteed to be spam/malware-free...

-- 
-Doug
@zamoose
http://literalbarrage.org/blog/
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