[theme-reviewers] Draft Theme Development Checklist

[Austin Matzko]

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:
> Please take a look here:
> http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development_Checklist_Draft
>
> These are the draft theme development checklist and review criteria. Please
> take a look and comment. Once we're all agreed on the guidelines, I'll
> generate WXR and SQL files to accompany the revised guidelines.

That's a great list.  Thanks for compiling it.

I've been reading the theme reviews with curiosity, and I think it
would be helpful if there were more clarity about what disqualifies a
theme. I think this list will go a long way to improving that clarity,
so may I also suggest the following?

First, I'd recommend that the list use terms just as "must," "should,"
"recommend," and "may," etc. as they're defined in RFC 2119 [1].  RFC
2119 is fairly widely used, so it would provide a commonly-agreed-upon
definition for those terms.  So that implies either that the "should"
and "recommend" sections of the list be merged or different ways of
describing those sections be used, since by RFC 2119 "recommend" and
"should" are synonymous.

Second, I propose that when theme reviewers deny a theme they either
give at least one reason that fell into the "must" category or several
in the "should" category.  I've noticed, for example, that a number of
themes have been denied for not employing `wp_link_pages`.  If this is
in fact sufficient reason for a theme to be disqualified,
`wp_link_pages` must appear in the "must" list, or some equivalent
such as "themes must link to additional pages."

Third, this list should specify what counts as a "PHP error."  It
seems that many themes have been disqualified for generating PHP
NOTICE messages.  Do all NOTICE messages count as disqualifying
errors?  In other words, *must* a theme generate *no* NOTICE messages?
 Or are a few acceptable? (Some developers do not consider NOTICE
messages to be true errors).


[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt