[theme-reviewers] Note to theme reviewers about settings in themes

[Chip Bennett]

I must say: I don't really understand this rule suggestion. I don't see the
problem with setting default options, as opposed to adding in a bunch of
conditional code in the Theme template files, in order to account for unset
options.

I'm not even sure I would suggest this approach as a "best practice", given
the amount of additional code/processing that implementation would require;
setting default options is just more efficient.

We already require that Themes use an options array as the single entry in
wp_options; so we're minimizing Theme DB clutter. It's true that Theme
reviewers will have a lot of such DB entries; but I don't think we should be
making universal rules based on an incredibly niche sub-set of Theme users.

Chip

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

> This is just a note about a rule that I think should be added to the
> theme review process:
>
> - Themes should not do anything to the database merely by virtue of
> being activated.
>
> By that, I mean that having a theme check for a setting, like
> get_option or get_theme_mod and then calling set_option or
> set_theme_mod to set it to some default is wrong.
>
> Both get_option and get_theme_mod accept a second parameter of a
> default setting. If I call get_option('whatever',123) and there is no
> whatever option, then that will return 123.
>
> Use the defaults properly. Don't set them just because they're not there.
>
> -Otto
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>
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