[theme-reviewers] Questions regarding theme review process

[Rahul Bansal]

Hi All,

First sorry if I am asking this at wrong place. (In that case, please let me
know right place to ask this...)

Now...
During review process of our first theme, I felt that there are some
"internal" guidelines which decides:

   - What feature should go inside theme OR plugin?
   - Which libraries/third-party codes a theme can use?
   - May be some more...

All above comes into picture towards end of review process.
For example - I got to know that libraries like timthumb are banned here.
Also theme-developers has restrictions on adding features in their theme
code because somebody thinks a particular functionality should be part of
plugin!

My concern is, for our next theme, which is actually our internal base-theme
(sort of framework) and contains features like:

   1. Social bookmarking/Sharing controls (twitter/facebook/etc buttons)
   2. Advertising options (like Google AdSense/BuySellAds/Kontera etc)
   3. Typography options (font-faces/font-sizes/etc)
   4. Layout Options (2-column/3-column/etc)
   5. Content Options (Thumbnail size/summaries/read-more settings)
   6. Other options like feedburner integration, favicon/logo upload

There were SEO options also which we plan to retire in favor of
wordpress-seo plugin by yoast.

To give you better ideas, just think of themes at themeforest which provides
theme-options.
We have many clients on themeforest for which above said internal framework
has been maintained and continuously updated from a year.

Now question is - if we decide to release our framework in open-source,
which features we need to remove (if any) to maintain compliances here?

Also, can we upload themes we have developed for themeforest here?
Will there be any extra regulations regarding features & options themes at
themeforest provides?
Just a note - themeforest publishers are very aggressive. On one instant a
client sent us list of 30+ plugins which he wanted to integrate in a
wordpress-theme!

We have many themes in our repo, originally developed for themeforest but
never launched for various reasons (most common is client defaulting
payment).
We are owners of all graphics/code which we want to release on wordpress
theme repo, of course under GPL :-)

==

My second question is regarding parent-child theme.

Here is what we want to achieve.

   1. Our base theme (framework) is common across all our themes [Parent]
   2. Each theme has its own set of local changes [Child]

We want to leverage power of parent-child theme to push updates. If there is
any change in base-framework - all child theme users should get a
notification about new update of parent theme.

Not sure if possible here, specially as SVN access is not available on
theme-repo (like we have access to SVN on plugin-repo).

Regarding release - should we release parent and child theme separately? Is
there any extra guideline on parent-child theme release.

Also while answering please consider 3-level relationship =>
parent-child-grandchild as well!

==

The only purpose of asking all questions in advance here is to save
our development efforts and also precious time of theme review team.

I hope to get some good suggestions/guidance/inputs here.

Thanks All,
-Rahul


--
Rahul Bansal | Founder & CEO | rtCamp Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Mobile: +91-9860501882 | Web: http://rtcamp.com/
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