[theme-reviewers] WP.org theme preview

[Otto]

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:
> 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.

It's not really a matter of guidelines. It's simply a bad way to write code.

> 2) Any such statement (or action) would impact almost EVERY SINGLE THEME
> with Theme Options in the repository.

Not at all. It's perfectly easy to have theme options with defaults.
Just don't set them by default when nobody actually changes them. I've
posted about this here before.

Basically, if you have an init function that does something like a)
check for options and then b) set options if they're not set, then
you're doing it wrong. Nobody wants a theme setting a bunch of crap in
the database the moment it's activated. It's totally unnecessary.

Example:

$my_option = get_option('my_option', 'default');

If the my_option is set, then it's gotten from the database.
Otherwise, it is "default". This is the proper way to do defaults.

Example 2: Using a big-array-of-options.

$defaults = array(
  'option1'=>'value1',
  'option2'=>'value2',
  //etc
);
$options = wp_parse_args( get_option('theme-options',array() ), $defaults);

Any option not set in the theme-options array will get the default
value used for it instead in the resulting $options array.

Defaults should be set in variables at the time of getting the
options, not pre-set and shoved into the database at some kind of init
or activation time. This is simply because you cannot tell on what
sort of setup your code will be running for sure, and you don't know
what's in the database in advance. The contents of the database are
outside your control and can be changed by other things, basically, so
your code should be written with that in mind.

For example, in the theme-previewer, we might just implement a
no-options policy by making the tables read-only (that is one of the
long term plans, in fact). So setting defaults in the DB on such a
setup certainly wouldn't work.

-Otto