[theme-reviewers] WP.org theme preview

[Chip Bennett]

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:
>
> Basically, you wrote your theme wrong. It should function properly without
> any options being set at all. Options are *optional* and you should have
> default fallbacks for all of them.
>
> Setting options on activation is a big no-no. Don't do it. I'll remove a
> theme from the system for doing that. It's bad code, bad karma, and it often
> breaks the theme previewer.
>

I have problems with this:

1) The Theme Review Guidelines don't currently say anything about handling
of default options, or how to initialize them. I don't agree with a
unilateral, blanket statement (or action) of removing Themes based on this
criterion.
2) Any such statement (or action) would impact almost EVERY SINGLE THEME
with Theme Options in the repository.

There is no security issue, or any other similarly egregious concern, with
this issue. Thus, it needs to be implemented in the Guidelines following the
usual procedure.

Personally, I think the matter needs to be discussed before being added to
the Guidelines; however, if it is a matter of "pulling rank" here, so be it.
Just let us know if that's the case, so that we can add it to the
Guidelines.

But even if we add it to the Guidelines, based either on community
discussion or an "above our pay grade" decision, it needs to follow the
established timeline: that is to say, it won't become *required* until
WordPress 3.3 is released.

>
> Write your theme options code such that it doesn't need to have the options
> actually there to begin with. get_option has a second parameter to specify a
> default if needed. If you're using one-big-options-array, then you should
> have code to account for the fact that the option might not be in the array.
> That sort of thing.
>
> I do like this as a matter of suggested best-practice, at least in the
template-file output. I think it could be a bit impractical in the Admin
Settings Page option form, but I'm going to explore implementing in
Oenology.

Chip
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